The eventual winners of the inaugural Nokia Connecting Beats competition in 2004, My Ninja Lover are the Brisbane based trio made up of Manta Ray, Chris Buckridge and Porl DeVille. Having grown out of somewhat ‘traditional’ means, all three members having cut their teeth on the Brisbane live band circuit, they combined to create MNL roughly 18 months ago. Their win in the Connecting Beats competition secured them a full mastered EP and a trip to the UK to play at celebrated breakbeat club Chew the Fat! With entries now open for the 2005 Connecting Beats competition, ITM thought it was high time we caught up with MNL to find out what came of their win, and what they have on the horizon.

How did the three of you come to meet and start working together?

Chris: A long and twisted tale – Porl and I were first in a band together back in the late-nineties called Trace Element. Very different to MNL as the lead instrument was a violin, but Porl and I were both dabbling in electronic production even then. When TE parted ways, Porl and Manta helped form another band called Zephyr Timbre, which went on to much bigger things, playing shows around the country and releasing two EPs. ZT came to an end about 18 months back, and I’d remained friends with both Porl and Sam, so it seemed natural to just start swapping ideas for production. Before we knew it we were having animated debates about band names!

Give us a rundown of the My Ninja Lover sound. Where do you draw your inspirations from?

Chris: There’s a lot of different influences, both in terms of the three of us having different tastes and styles, and in terms of the different modes of production and performance – some tracks will come together purely in the studio, and they can be a bitch to take live, while others emerge from live jamming. Having that ability and desire to play live music, whether it’s Manta singing or Porl and myself playing guitar, bass and keyboards, really opens up a lot of options that you don’t have when you’re just programming behind a computer, or vice versa.

Your bio states that you ‘splice the old tonal ways with futuristic technology’, what sort of setup do you run in the studio vs. live on stage?

Chris: In purely technical terms, when in the studio we write using Cubase, Logic and Reason, as well as some hardware synths. With that we’re able to incorporate pretty much anything we want in terms of live instrumentation, samples and programming. On stage we run Ableton Live, though it’s always a battle between how much live tweaking we can do on the computer versus playing our other instruments live. It’s good to have that option of changing things up live, but in terms of connecting with the audience and the music, it’s hard to beat having a guitar or bass slung over your shoulder! Let’s just say the live set-up is a work in progress!

All three of you produce and arrange music for the group – does it ever become a case of ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’, or do you each know each other’s boundaries when writing music?

Chris: This also is a work in progress! The three of us have known each other for a long time now, so I think that we know how far we can push each other, but as any creative person would tell you, the creative process itself is rarely that easy – particularly when you’re doing it collaboratively! At this point, each track is unique in terms of the collaborative process – there are tracks which someone will bring to the rest of us nearly fully formed, while there are others which start off as a beat or a chord progression and which get work-shopped by all three of us. In the end it’s just a matter of doing what works for that track, and not being too precious about the original idea – a brilliant initial idea can go through a lot of different changes before it actually makes it as a finished song.

How important is it for you as a group to be a live act, as well as a producing your own music, showing that you’re not just a studio outfit?

Chris: It’s definitely important, but I don’t think that it’s a matter of “showing that we’re a not just a studio outfit”. There’s a lot of wicked producers who never take their music live, and I can definitely respect that and appreciate the freedom you get by just focusing on that aspect of things. I think we’re always going to be a live outfit because that’s how each of us started out, and it’s something that we really enjoy – the interaction with each other, with the audience, with the music. For all that you might be playing along to a sequence, there’s still a surprising amount of room for improvisation, and that’s a really valuable way of honing the music.  

Two thirds of the group were also in the band Zephyr Timbre. For Porl and Chris, how does MNL compare/differ to your experiences in the more traditional ‘live band’ setting?

Chris: Porl and Manta were in Zephyr Timbre, but all three of us have been in bands that you might class as more “traditional”. I’m presuming that by that you’re meaning without sequencers, etcetera. It’s definitely a different experience to playing with a fully live band. At the same time though, on our own instruments there’s still that flexibility to get creative in the live setting.

You were the winners in the inaugural Nokia Connecting Beats competition last year, which saw you win a trip to the UK to play at Chew the Fat! How was the gig?

Chris: The gig was great – much better than even we’d expected I think. It’s an incredible feeling to be playing your first international show at such a legendary club (The End), and only a month after playing your first ever live gig! And the crowd, most of whom wouldn’t have known who we were, was really supportive and into it – not the stand-offish English crowd we’d prepared ourselves for at all! All in all, it’s whet our appetites to get back over there, but at the same time we’re looking forward to getting our show out to a wider Australian audience as well.

Part of the prize for Connecting Beats was also to have an EP mastered, and to meet with labels overseas. How is the EP coming along? How did you find the meeting with overseas label?

Chris: The whole process of preparing the EP and having it mastered manufactured was a little surreal given how quickly it all had to be done. In that respect it was probably a good kick in the ass, but at the same time I think it means that we’re already looking at how we can do better. That said though, we’re really proud of the tracks on the EP, and hopefully we’ll be able to get a full commercial release in the not-too-distant future! Meeting with the various labels was a really positive experience for us in a couple of ways – obviously it was great to get a lot of positive feedback from these professionals and from people who’ve been responsible for some of our favourite music. But it was also a bit of an eye-opener in terms of the business and how it works, and where MNL might fit into that. We’re in a slightly difficult position, blending live aspects and song structures with electronic beats and production, but I think that at the end of the day that can really work in our favour – we just have to make up some of the rules as we go!

This year the competition has broadened to accept entries from all genres of electronic music. How do you think this will change the overall results?

Chris: I think it’s an inevitable progression. One of the strange things for us in this whole Connecting Beats experience was that when we won it, the competition was being promoted as a breaks competition, and while ‘2×2’ (our winning track) was breaks, the rest of our repertoire ran the gamut from house to down-tempo to drum’n’bass, and the EP reflected that to a certain extent. But I think that a lot of producers are doing that, and in a competition like this, you want to put your best foot forward, and if that’s a house track, then why should that be excluded? Opening it up to more genres can only mean a higher standard of entries, and at the end of the day, lifting the standard is what makes competitions like this valuable.

What’s on the horizon for MNL? What do you have coming up that people should keep an eye out for?

Chris: World domination! But everyone says that, right? I think at this point our short-term goals are to get our live show out to as many audiences as possible, and to get some sort of CD release. From there it’s really a matter of building it organically – a boost like Connecting Beats is an incredible opportunity, but when you come back to earth, you’ve still got to put in the hard yards in terms of touring and writing new material, so that’s what our sights are really set on at the moment. In terms of what to look out for? My Ninja Lover, coming soon to a venue near you!

If you’re an aspiring electronic producer or live act and would like to get your music heard, be sure to check out the Nokia Connecting Beats competition. Entries close at  midnight on May 6th, so get in quick! For more info check out http://www.connectingbeats.com.au/.