From only having a single EP before the first lockdown to playing The Leadmill on the 25th June, local band Minds Idle are seemingly going from strength to strength. We even chose the band’s newest single, Spaceman, for our inaugural Sheffield Spotlight! It seems clear that, for Minds Idle, similarly to the eponymous Astronaut from their most recent single, the only way to go is up.
We spoke to three members of the band a few weeks ago to find out more about one of Sheffield’s most exciting up-and-coming bands.
So guys, thanks for agreeing to speak to us! How are you all?
Yeah man no worries! We’re alright, we’ve just had to rush here from filming a video which was really fun but it’s all been a bit hectic!
Ah that sounds really cool! Well, if we can just start with you guys telling us a bit about yourselves?
Yeah sure! So there’s the three of us [lead singer Ted, guitarist Jack, and bass-player James], and then there’s Ben on the drums and Jazmin on keys. We’re all from round Sheffield, Nether Edge mainly. We’re definitely a local band, and we’re very proud of that.
Being from Sheffield, would you say being from the city is important to you guys as a band? Is it a good city for you guys, as a band?
We all love Sheffield definitely, it’s been fantastic for us and Sheffield is just really great for smaller bands. However, Sheffield is a bit limited in what it can do to help bands grow. There’s not enough booking agents in Sheffield, and people from here can have quite a humble, modest attitude about what they do, and whilst personally we think that’s great, in the music industry it can sort of work against you. But Sheffield is a really great city, especially for music- it’s overdue for another big band popping up and leading the city’s music scenes somewhere.
And what about Minds Idle? Can you tell us more about the band?
So the band itself has existed, in some form or another, for about five or six years. It wasn’t anything particularly serious at first, just us pissing about, but then about three or four years ago we started to take it more seriously. We’d released our first EP before the first lockdown and started getting more gigs and some more attention, but then the pandemic hit and obviously we couldn’t do much. However, the lockdown did mean we had time to tinker with some of our recordings, allowing us to make sure they sounded as good as possible.
Obviously your new single ‘Spaceman’ came out only a few weeks ago, what was the lead up like to that?
So we wrote it about a year ago, but we just took ages to actually record and produce it and stuff. We wrote it very much as a homage to that sort of Space Oddity/Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie sound, especially Space Oddity. We also realised the general story of the song lended itself really well to a music video so we had that planned quite early. We recorded/produced it very slowly, basically coming back to the song once a month. We did some of it ourselves, and some of it with Tufty [Paul Tuffs from Sidney&Matilda], specifically on the drums and stuff. Then we had to shoot the video which, in contrast to the production of the song, was really short! It was a really intense shoot, over an extended weekend basically. We had four twelve-hour days shooting it all. But we’re really proud of it, and the reaction to it has been good so far!
What are your plans from here then? Obviously you have your gig at The Leadmill on the 25th June, but what about after that?
We’re just trying to build more of an audience at the moment to be honest, cementing the audience here in Sheffield and getting the attention of audiences nationally (as well as the attention of booking agents). We’ve also got a few things in the works, specifically a Tarantino-esque song which definitely has a great video going along with it!
We’ll make sure to keep a lookout! Thanks for talking with us guys!
No worries, thank you!
You can see Minds Idle at The Leadmill on 25th June, supported by Delights and The Easy Mornings.
Tickets are £8, with doors open at 7:30pm.