NeoL

――This is your first album and congratulations on your new album, and I believe you have got a lot of new listeners since it’s released, so I would like to ask you about the album itself of course, but also I wanna hear about your background or how you started music.

Ela Minus : Okay, I started it from 9 years old with playing a piano and very quickly switched to drums. I had a punk band as a teenager and when I was growing up. I officially studied drums and jazz when I went to Berklee College of Music in the US. That is where I started listening to electronic music and going to clubs. I became very interested in synthesizers, so I programmed my own synthesizers. While being a drummer I made synthesizers for other people as well. I have so many old synthesizers in my house so I started using them in my projects.


――I see. I would like to ask you about being a drummer in your band. It was a surprise for me that you were a drummer of a hardcore band. Could you let me know how your life was in the band back then?

Ela Minus : I was very different when I was young. Other band members are all boys except me and we were all very close. The teenage years, especially between 11 and 18, you are constantly learning and reshaping your identity. Those years with the band were like my school and I learned about being part of something bigger than yourself. By spending time with the band, I felt that I belonged to something and my life had a meaning. Back then I was very different, I was chubby and not popular.

――I can’t imagine that, though.


Ela Minus : Teenagers are so insecure but having a band made me feel like it didn’t matter because I have a new thing. I am very grateful to have grown up having such a community where everybody knows each other. It is so special.





――So, you were playing the piano younger than you were in the band, and I read the article that the reason you started drumming was to go against your mother who wanted you to play the piano, but how’s the experience from the band living in your current musical approach?


Ela Minus : I think it’s everything. Even though it’s a solo project and I am a solo artist, I still think in a group. I care about the people that I work with, and I only work with people that I like a lot. I pretty much live that punk spirit. That DIY experience of doing whatever you want yourself. You only work with your friends because you love each other. Even though I am a big label now, I only sign with them because I really like them as people and belong to this family. Also the physicality of playing an instrument, touching and playing with your hands is very different from most artists that use computers. I think this comes from my past experience in a band.


――After being in the band for ten years, you started studying jazz drumming and synthesizer at Berklee College of Music. Which is amazing, but what made you decide to enter Berklee?


Ela Minus : I was about 17 when I decided to go to Berklee. Everyone in my band wanted to go there. In Colombia if you want to be a musician and study contemporary music, that was the place. There is no school that teaches contemporary music in Colombia. In that time it was the only school that taught jazz and synthesizers.
Since my whole life was about the band, everyone wanted to go together so I was like “sure!”. But then only two of us got accepted. That was the reason why the band broke up, because everybody got mad at each other. I didn’t mind not going if everyone wasn’t there but in the end I decided to go. Of course it was amazing and I was very glad.


――In Berklee, you were taught by the legendary drummer, Terri Lyne Carrington. What did you learn from her?

Ela Minus : I am so thankful. I really think that she changed my life. In a more technical aspect, I learned to play melodies with the drumset. I trained my ear to only follow the melodies, understand the soul of the song in every genre. I agree to her melodic aspect of the song and to think that way as a drummer it’s really revolutionary. You are so much more sensitive, and you are serving the music not yourself. She taught me not only the philosophy of it, but also how to do it. She is an incredible human being and very inspiring. Even as a female she is such a great role model. I’m very thankful.

――Based on that whole experience, you started techno music after that, that you are doing right now. How did you get to the current style of your music?

Ela Minus : I didn’t plan to make this. I was kind of bored of bands and the music I was making as a drummer. I started as a game for myself. I felt like I could make something with these machines. I had never sung before so that was also a good experiment. I was very lucky that people got interested. So I started playing a lot of live shows. I said yes to everything, and in these concerts with the audience, is how I developed the sound that is in the record.


――So, it just happened naturally. You wanted to try everything.


Ela Minus : Yes, over a couple of years. I think the record is the representation of those years.

――I would like to get into specific questions about your album, but first of all, did you have any concepts and ideas to create the sound for this album?


Ela Minus : I wanted to make a club album. In my mind it was a punk club. I wanted a techno club, with a punk aspect of a small, sweaty compact space. With the album I gained a low of followers and listeners but before I was playing in very small clubs. I loved that. I wanted to make a record for those clubs. Very small and intimate ones.


――Did you experience any challenging things or did you try anything new for this album?


Ela Minus : Yes. Everything about this album was a challenge. Everything I did was new. I have never made an album before and I made it completely alone in my apartment. I have never produced anything before. I had only worked on my own music by myself but it was very short, like EPs of three songs. It was completely different from an album. A lot of technical things were my first. I enjoyed it very much like the title of the song, “they told us it’s hard, but they were wrong”. It was very hard but in a nice way, just like how things that matter are harder to do.


――So, about the synthesizer you use, do you have a particular choice of the equipment you use for making music? If you have any specific synthesizer you love to use, I would like to know.


Ela Minus : First of all, never computers. Computers are banned in my musical existence. But specific synthesizers, like the moog MINITAUR which is a base synthesizer and the moog Sirin are the two that I need very much. Also the Roland JUNO-60. Those three are my favourite ones that I can’t live without.


――Do you use them for your live shows, too?


Ela Minus : Yes. I don’t have many synthesizers but those that I have I use them for everything. For recording, for writing and for my live shows. Very minimal.


――Most of the time your music is Do It Yourself style and you produce your music by yourself, but in this album, the last song is featured Helado Negro. How did that happen? How did you meet him?


Ela Minus : I’m a fan. I went to a show of his in New York. It was very surreal, he stopped between the songs and said “You’re Ela Minus I love your music! Thank you for coming to my show, please stay after I would love to talk to you.” So we met that way and became friends. He asked me to sing on his album couple of years ago in ‘This Is How You Smile’. We worked together on his album and I thought our voices sounded so beautiful together. When I wrote ‘Close’, I wrote it in one night. I woke up the next day and I thought it would sound beautiful as a duet. As a cheesy 80s duet. I immediately remembered his voice, and I asked him that day. We did it in 30 minutes, one take that day in his studio. I really like it.


――Wow. Maybe that was meant to be.


Ela Minus : I think it sounds like that. I think it sounds so natural, nice and sweet.


――Do you have any music or musicians you are inspired for making this album?


Ela Minus : My biggest inspiration have been a couple of jazz musicians like Chet Baker and Miles Davis. I am obsessed with melody. In a more contemporary world, I would say Caribou. They have such emotional music references. When I was making the record I was listening to Daft Punk’s first record called ‘Homework’, and John Maus. More electronic and indie music, I love it too.

――I was surprised that you recorded this album almost two years ago. But your message and your statement in this album is obviously something we can feel very real today, more than two years ago. Do you feel like your message in this album has got more real and more important than two years ago? And do you think any new meaning has added to your album within these two years?

Ela Minus : Yes 100%. I would agree with you. It would not have been the same if it was released two years ago. I read a lot about John Cage, he used to say that “The artist only gives 50% of the meaning, and the audience gives the other 50%” I never understood it as deeply as now. Both the audience and the context of art are more than half of the actual art. It is the viewer, and everything he or she is carrying that gives meaning. The fact that my record came in a moment that already has so much context, it is seen as real. I wouldn’t have wished it would come out any other time. It mattered this year and only for that is a success in my heart.


――You were not waiting to release it, right?

Ela Minus : It was a coincidence. I finished it and I was a week away before releasing it.Because I was touring so much, there had been so many people who wanted to work with me. I had never really paid attention to working with others, but for some reason a lot of interesting people wanted to know when I finished my album. In order to make the album I took six months and people noticed this. Labels started getting interested and I took meetings so it took a long time. I met people at my label, I love them and getting a big contract with a label took a long time.

――I’d like to ask you about “Megapunk” in this album, but I thought the lyrics “You don’t want to understand／You’re choosing to lead us apart／But against all odds／You still won’t make us stop” is an empowering statement which can encourage protests or demonstrations that are going on right now. How did you come up with this song?


Ela Minus : “Megapunk” was the song I worked on the most. When I first wrote it it was about female oppression. I have seen a lot of my female friends and I was in a relationship that was always demanding that I stopped working. My boyfriend would always tell me to stop working, and I was working too much. I was very mad when I wrote this song, and I had a couple of friends who quit their job to become housewives. It was clear in my mind that it was pressure. I wanted to write an anthem for women to step up, not stop and unite. A big problem with women is that we tend to compete between each other. I was thinking about it afterwards and I realised that women weren’t the only ones who needed to keep fighting for their needs. The sentence you quoted was very much inspired by politics. Politicians around the world tend to be radical right. A characteristic of being right is dividing people. So I was writing that it was a choice we were making that everyone is dividing us all the time. The initial idea was about female empowerment but it is about everyone who needs encouragement to stand up.


――There is also the lyric saying “Everyone told us it’s hard, but they were wrong”. But the “Everyone” in that lyric means someone who forces you to do something or be something supposed to be as a woman?


Ela Minus : Yes exactly. Everyone in my life, including people in the music industry have told me that you can’t do this, you need to do something else, you need to sing in another language.





――I believe you get a certain amount of voices that say your music is political. But I think your message is more personal, because it feels like it’s something that came out from your personal experiences and something you are talking to your audiences, rather than a statement to society or the world. So I would like to know where your perspective or your principle, and your philosophy came from.


Ela Minus : First of all I love that you see it like that. That is exactly how I intended it to be. I’m very surprised that people understood the political element. For me it’s the most personal thing I could have done. I was speaking to my audience on a personal level. While I was making the record I realised that I had named one song “A Little Act of Rebellion”. I always liked the name of that song a lot. It felt powerful and also humble because of the “Little Act”. It is the first song of the record.
I remember one night I was listening to the demos and thinking about what I was making. I realised then that the act of rebelling and taking the harder route was what I was doing throughout my life. It was embarrassing because I started questioning if the real reason I was doing everything, was just because someone told me I couldn’t. It seems like a silly reason but I was trying to be honest and naked with my music. It’s not about me being ashamed of myself, this is who I am.
This is the record I have to make, it is so important that we define everything and question everything. That is the path to freedom, and when you are free you are happy because you did something good for yourself. I really think our souls, our bodies are good to us when we are good to them. By questioning and reimagining your life, you are happier and only then you are a nicer person to everyone. I just wanted to offer another way. Just because someone has told you one way doesn’t mean that is the way you should follow.


――When you make your music, do you get inspired by people surrounding you?


Ela Minus : I tried really hard to not make it about myself but also I realized with this album that it is myself that other people relate to. Even if I try to write about people I meet and get inspired by, the only thing other people see is when I am being honest about myself. It’s like mirror really.


――This is the last question, but could you give us your message for your listeners especially in Japan?


Ela Minus : Japan has always been my number country I want to go to. I am so inspired by your culture and I can’t wait to go. I want my listeners to be free and happy. I hope that when you listen to my music you feel invincible and it empowers you to do the things you want to do.

Photography Juan Ortiz-Arenas
text Junnosuke Amai
edit Ryoko Kuwahara