Interview: Badmind

Newcastle’s lo-fi/R&B pop duo Badmind drop their new single Flaws & Phases. The pair have been selected to perform as part of BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend Festival and this latest offering is a chilled and groovy affair with soulful vocals and a contemporary, summer ready sound.

We talk to the duo about the track and being selected for the Big Weekend Festival…

How did Badmind form? Which artists have inspired your sound?
(Dayna) We met a couple years back at some random music competition and liked each other’s performances and music so decided to work together on some music and it has kind of built from there.

Briefly describe your songwriting process. How has lockdown affected writing and recording?
(Dayna) We tend to do both the music and the lyrics in the room together at the same time. Jaimie will start making the music and while he is doing that I’ll be forming ideas in my notes on my phone and it goes on from there. It’s usually pretty quick getting the initial idea together then we spend a bit time on arrangement and production. We usually only write a verse and a chorus and put it into a song folder. We’ll do a bunch of those and pick our favorite to revisit and work on more in depth.

Tell us about your new single Flaws & Phases. What is it about?
(Dayna) ‘Flaws & Phases’ was one of the songs we did during a pretty intense month long writing camp. We worked with our guitarist Stuart Davies on a majority of the tracks and this was one of our favourites. Anyone that knows us knows that we like to experiment with our sound whilst still leaning towards a pop structure and sound. The song is about a person loving you through everything, not just being there for the good times but through the bad times too. We all have our own flaws and different phases that we go through in life and the song is a sort of shout out to the significant person in your life who goes through them with you.

How did it feel to be selected by Radio 1 for this year’s Big Weekend Festival?
(Jaimie) It was crazy, we got an email from Nick Roberts (BBC Introducing North East) and he asked if we could jump on a zoom call so we just assumed it was like an interview or something. He recorded the video call and got our reaction when he gave us the news, we were genuinely shocked. I don’t remember the last time an unsigned band from Newcastle got an opportunity to play the Big Weekend Festival, it’s been a while like. It makes it a bit more special to know that we’re representing BBC Introducing for the North East when both Nick & Lee have helped us so much this past year.

Is there anything else in the pipeline that you can tell us about?
(Dayna) We’ve got our single ‘Flaws & Phases’ coming out on Friday 28th May although it might be out by the time you’re reading this I’m not sure and we got a lot of new music on the way. We are working on putting together a Newcastle show but are waiting until there are no restrictions as a sit down / distanced show isn’t ideal for us or the audience.