MIEN
“Black Habit”
MIEN
What a great superband. In rock history, oftentimes members from other disparate bands have formed a new band, but often the egos don’t match (think The Traveling Wilburys or Blind Faith). But MIEN seems to have defeated that curse. The Black Angel’s Alex Maas, The Horror’s Tom Furse, Elephant Stone’s Rishi Dhir and The Earlies’ John-Mark Lapham, this new band combines all the ways the previous bands were great into the new killer supergroup, C,S,N,& Y for the 21st century.
The seeds were sown for this collaboration as long ago as 2004, when Rishi Dhir found himself in a chance encounter with Black Angels’ frontman Alex Maas whilst performing sitar with his former band on a bill at SXSW in Austin with The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Not long afterwards, he would also stumble across the Anglo-American band The Earlies, who he would similarly collaborate and share a stage with. This led to essentially the genesis of MIEN, via a shared love for one song – the ‘classic sitar banger’ by the Association, ‘Wantin’ Ain’t Gettin’. Upon finding that both he and The Earlies’ electronics guru and producer John Mark Lapham had a particular desire to cover this ditty, they began a slow process of putting together the version they’d always dreamt of. Whilst this would never come to fruition – the sparks that flew between them lit up a collaborative path clearly worth following.
Let’s hope this is a band that will keep going. I love MIEN.