Westward Dish wrote about MNDR’s excellent performance in Denver earlier this week. With statements like “MNDR is the spiritual heir to Debbie Harry” and “MNDR a confidence and charisma on stage that is pure rock star” it seems we aren’t the only ones who think MNDR puts on a great live show! Read the full review here.
Click here to read a write up of MNDR on NikeWomen.com. They call out the song “Caligula” to help you break a sweat, declaring “the spacey track will get your blood pumping with its pulsating beats and textured sound effects.”
MNDR was given Pitchforks’s “Best New Music” stamp in their review of “I Go Away” from her debut EP.
Brooklyn’s Amanda Warner makes dynamic electro-pop under the moniker MNDR, and she’s been building buzz with her project while also working with folks like Mark Ronson. “I Go Away”, a major highlight from the her debut EP, E.P.E., is filled with distinctive synths that melt all over a spare, echoing drum beat like a candy house left out in the hot sun. It’s a serious slow-dance pop confection, but Warner keeps a clear head lyrically. “I Go Away” initially sounds like a post-relationship-fallout slow burner, as she asks, “How did I get here/ Without feeling anything”. Soon, though, you realize that she isn’t calming down– she’s getting pumped up. “This is my anthem/ I know it like I know everything”, Warner softly declares, as if she’s getting ready to step out in front of the curtain, before letting out titular squeaks during a chorus that favorably evokes Santigold as the track builds to its cathartic peak.
Take a listen for yourself here.
MNDR played a great show with V.V. Brown and Class Actress at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC last night and The Village Voice was on hand to soak it all in. They really loved her projections, calling it a “a hell of a mind-bending spectacle going behind her, a mixture of Atari-style blocky stuff and digital Spirograph fantasias synced up to respond to both her voice and, ideally, ours.” Though of course that’s nothing without “her muscular, blaring gearhead-techno anthems, with startlingly gooey pop centers, are rousing enough; the mighty ‘Fade to Black’ especially.”
As a physical presence, too, Warner is fascinating, with her blocky white glasses and slightly regal, slightly nerdy air, gripping her mic stand with authority and vogue-ing with aplomb. She casually mentions that she was in the ER last night with a fever of 102; her set actually climaxes between songs, where she tests the whole voice-activated light show thing, wherein we all scream and the screen behind her slowly turns solid white. “Now we’re all connected, like string theory,” she announces, satisfied. “Even though string theory is kinda fake.”
Read the whole article on the Village Voice’s website.
The Huffington Post ran it’s SXSW follow up article today and listed MNDR as “Best Show”.
The best show I saw all week was put on by one lady band MNDR, a modern-era, Janis Joplin-esque songstress who took the stage with crystals hanging from her neck and a safety pin barely keeping her shirt on.
It’s just her and her keyboard and a boatload of enthusiasm. There weren’t more than 40 people there to see her perform but she brought the funk like it was Madison Square Garden. And every time the beat dropped — a beat she has no doubt heard hundreds, if not thousands of times — she reacted with so much joy it was like she had just been kissed by a puppy.
Check out their full review of MNDR’s set and the rest of the superlatives here.
The Fader posted a video and reviewed MNDR’s show on February 16th at the Brooklyn Bowl. Take a look!:
When MNDR played our monthly FADER Bowl, we were convinced the crystal necklace she was wearing was going to shoot lasers out of it, or perhaps assist in her animorphing to a unicorn and spiriting away to save a distant land. While that didn’t happen, she did look pretty superhero-like beneath the pink light of the stage, holding court with yet another one of her future mega-hits. And even if she can’t control the universe with her accessories, she clearly has quite a handle over pixel-stars and synth modules, which is good enough for us if she’s gonna keep making songs like this.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FC-Jg2zVdT8
Read more at The Fader.
Brooklyn Vegan’s review of MNDR’s December 15 show with Neon Indian and Toro y Moi at the Mercury Lounge in NYC. This was the first performance with her new lightshow designed by collaborating artist Jamie Carreiro.
MNDR with lightshow in full effect
MNDR at Mercury Lounge
See more photos on Brooklyn Vegan.
In case you didn’t make it to any of MNDR’s sold out shows last week with Neon Indian, there’s been a bit of press out there to remind you what you missed. Latest is a review of the show in the Village Voice:
One-woman Brooklyn-by-way-of-Oakland band MNDR is way, way more enjoyable — I am profoundly suspicious of anyone who self-identifies as “ghettotech,” but she’s brassy and volatile and cheeseball-anthemic in a not-unlike-Lady-Gaga sort of way. “OK, seriously, you can move to this music!” she thunders at a packed house too mesmerized by her light show to move. “This is techno!” Nonplussed, she soon moves on to the next track: “This is about being in love in China. And post-Bush globalization. This is not a joke. Everything I do is dead serious.”
MNDR just played two great shows with Neon Indian at the Mercury Lounge in New York. Check out the New York Times review of the Wednesday night show which described MNDR as
“the one-person dance machine Amanda Warner, who unlike the other acts on the bill, had no interest in obscuring anything. Her music was blunt and ecstatic, an antidote to boys in hiding.”
“Reggae Got Soul” is a traditional reggae riddim album with a number of artists each voicing unique mix-downs of the same rhythm track. The beat is based on a Casio CZ101 bassline, reminiscent of 1980’s digital dancehall, laid over thuggy hip hop drums and punctuated with various skanks and FX. Produced by Peter Wade and Jason Poras at WonderSound Studios NYC with some feature guests recorded in Jamaica and Italy.
A number of new up-and-coming artists are featured on “Reggae Got Soul,” alongside classic DJ’s and singers including the legendary Sugar Minott, and iTunes 2008 #1 artist, Jahdan Blakkamoore. Other features include rapper Izza Kizza (Timbaland, Missy Elliot), NYC’s notorious 77-Klash, and Jamaica’s gravel-voiced DJ Lion. A number of American top-of-the-pop hit songwriters also lent their voices, including Andrea Martin (Leona Lewis, Monica, En Vogue), Shelene Thomas (Nas, Santana, Tan-Yah Records) and Michelle Lynn Bell (Mary J Blige, Jennifer Lopez, Lynn & Wade LLP, Miley Cyrus). Also look for hard cuts by New York rude-boy King Django and Philly’s master of gangster chat, Stamma Ramma.
If you don’t believe us, check out this review at The Fader.
WonderSound’s “Reggae Got Soul” is now available worldwide!
Artist and professional songwriter Shelene Thomas has got one of the best voices out there. Voicing incredible tunes “I Don’t Wanna Leave You”, and the smash duet “Can You (give me what I need)” with Andrew Bell for Phillip Smart’s Tan-Yah label established her on the New York reggae scene as a force to be reckoned with.
A queen of reggae styles, Shelene says “I love Reggae. I love Jamaica though I haven’t been. Somebody take me please!”
As a songwriter, you can find Shelene Thomas’ name on albums from: Celine Dion, Jennifer Lopez, Tyrese, Music Soul Child, Santana and Nas, for whom she wrote and recorded the hook for “Oochie Wally”.
Shelene’s version of the “Reggae Got Soul” Riddim “It’s You (featuring Roaring Lion)” was the riddim’s first recording and set the stage for the stack of wicked tunes to come.