mynameisblueskye is an experimental recording artist who specialises in lo-fi, bedroom-based pop that bridges the gap from psych rock to freak folk and from synth pop to space rock. He has been making music for decades, under many different names. As part of our series of Black History Month projects, we wanted to talk to him not only about being a black musician in a scene where minorities are a minority, but also about the fact that he is an artist with autism and how this shapes his work and the world in which he creates it. Over the course of this interview, we cover that as well as his thoughts on the Boston music scene, musical formats, the art of the concept album, politics, and more.
BRC: Hey, how’s it going there? Whereabouts are you located?
MNIBS: Yeah, alright. Massachusetts. Boston.
BRC: Ah, OK. I don’t know much about Boston. Or Massachusetts. I think – obviously we’re both writers for Start Track and that’s how I am aware of you – and I think that once upon a time I mentioned something in the Discord chat about pro wrestling and I don’t think you were particularly interested in that – but yeah, there are pro wrestling connections to Boston and that’s basically all I know about it.
MNIBS: Alright.
BRC: So, part of the reason I’m doing these Black History Month interviews is basically to sort of shed some light on other modern black creatives and their journey and what that process looks like for them. I think, black people operating within the alternative or indie sphere – or whatever it may be – clearly we’re a minority, so I thought it’d be interesting to find out a little bit about your journey and about how it all goes for you.
MNIBS: Sounds good. And there are plenty of us coming out of the woodwork, it’s just the more there is…you know, it doesn’t seem like there are a whole lot of “breakout stars”. And that’s not the fault of the artist, you know? We just seem to hold on to this perception of what black people do in art – and as long as we have that, there isn’t potential for a big blow up, if you will. I don’t even know if that’s really the artist’s goal – but it would be nice.
BRC: Yeah. Off the top of my head, I can’t really think of many… TV On The Radio jumps to the front of my mind as being sort of pioneers of alternative/indie black artists. Bartees Strange is another one of my favourites – I’m not sure if you’re familiar with him – he hasn’t got much of a following compared to TV On The Radio, but I think he’s pretty wonderful. Do any others spring to mind for yourself?
MNIBS: I mean, you did mention TV On The Radio, and back then, there was them, there was Bloc Party, there was The Dears – that was more on the Canadian side – there was a band called Black Kids. So there was a collection of us doing certain things, but it seems like the one that truly made the mainstream and truly lasted has been TV On The Radio. Well, Bloc Party has lasted, but I guess they’re not really at the TV On The Radio level. Of the bands that I’ve mentioned, TV On The Radio was more American. Bloc Party is a British band. The Dears are from Montreal, Canada, and Black Kids. Black Kids released one album, became a pretty big name, and then went back to being more independent with Rookie.
BRC: I didn’t even realise that they made anything more after the first album. I remember the first album – there was a single on it about dancing and that did pretty well – over here anyway – but I didn’t realise they continued to exist after the first record.
MNIBS: Yeah, they have another album called Rookie on Bandcamp, and I think Reggie, right now, is busy with another project of his called Blunt Bangs.
BRC: OK, I’ll have to look into that. They completely fell off my radar after the first album – I remember enjoying the first record, though, but that happens sometimes. A lot of conversations I have with people go “yeah, I’ve got the first and second albums,” and then everything is kind of an afterthought. I don’t know if we’ll lose interest. Maybe it’s a sign of our collectively decreasing attention spans or just how we consume music nowadays – I don’t know. Are you an album person? Or are you on board with the modern consumption model of being very track-focused? A lot of people who are really into music tend to be album people. Are you an album person or are you a bit of both, or what?
MNIBS: I will always be an album person. That’s just my thing. I will always be the kind of guy who loves listening to albums from start to finish. Nothing will support this better than the fact that I have an affinity for concept albums. Concept albums are pretty much the highest that you can go in terms of music that treats the album as an art form. Because I like listening to albums from start to finish, concept albums pretty much give you an excuse to do that.
BRC: It makes it a necessity.
MNIBS: Where it’s telling a story or following a creative thread between one thing and another – and that’s what I’ve always loved. Keep me interested, keep me entertained.
BRC: Absolutely. Kendrick Lamar is pretty much the modern king of concept albums. I think it’d be pretty hard to argue with that. I can’t think of anyone else doing anything as pioneering storytelling-wise as he is, at the moment.
MNIBS: That is why they say that his albums are supposed to be, like, equivalents. Do you know that? He models his albums after certain art forms.
BRC: I did see something about that somewhere on the internet – remind me, what’s the theory?…
MNIBS: Section 80 is supposed to be like a book, Good Kid M.A.A.D. City was supposed to be like a movie. To Pimp A Butterfly was supposed to be a Poem. DAMN was supposed to be modeled like a magazine, they said – you know, reading git from start to finish, and back and forth, and Mr. Morale was more like a play or a musical, and they’re saying GNX was modeled after a cassette.
BRC: OK, interesting. I wonder what’s next for him then? I didn’t expect GNX at all. When it dropped, I was taken aback, but I think it was as instantaneous as a lot of his releases have been. From Good Kid M.A.A.D. City – that’s where I got into him – I think every release after that – I think Mr. Morale took a little bit longer than the others, maybe, to seep in – I think they hit you immediately, and the impact of his work is inarguable, and I think that he’s top of the game at the minute. So, other concept albums – there are a couple of other UK artists. The Streets’ second album is called A Grand Don’t Come For Free, and it follows a story of Mike Skinner losing a thousand pounds. I don’t know if you know that one, but that’s highly recommended if you don’t know it.
MNIBS: Yes, I’m very into The Streets. I used to have almost all their albums, back when we were fiends for buying CDs, I had all The Streets’ albums.
BRC: Would you say you’re more of a digital consumer now? Fewer physical products?
MNIBS: I mean, sometimes, you know? There’s nothing stopping me from getting a cassette tape or CD, but if the album is only or mostly on MP3s, then I’ll listen to MP3s. I’ll listen depending on the availability of the thing, you know? If the album is out physically, but I don’t really have the money for it, then I’ll go ahead and listen on a streaming service. If I can’t use a streaming service to listen to the whole album then I can buy the MP3 or the cassette or CD or what have you, or whatever format I can listen to as of right now.
BRC: Yeah, I mean, it’s great to have those choices. I think I’ll always be a physical format person at heart, but the convenience of being able to stream something is just, you know… Once we had iPods, I think I was never going back. I still use my iPod in the kitchen. It’s permanently plugged into a speaker dock, and it’s like a jukebox for me. I only have those choices, and when I’m cooking, I only have those options, and that’s interesting because it forces me sometimes to listen to things that maybe I haven’t done in a while. I’ll have a scroll through and go “oh yeah, maybe we’ll have a bit of that”. The iPod – what an invention that was. So, I wanted to ask you about your music. I’ve only had very fleeting encounters with it when you’ve shared stuff on the group chat on Discord, but how would you summarise your music? It might be quite a hard thing to do, but for people who haven’t listened to your music before, how would you describe what it’s like? What would you compare it to? How would you explain the vibe, etc?
MNIBS: I mean, I usually take one of two avenues. Either I describe my point of view that I’m trying to write from nowadays. Or I go ahead and describe the genres. I know that some people aren’t very genre-centric people – they like to go off of mood and vibes or concept and stuff. So which one would you prefer?
BRC: You can hit me with a bit of each if that works for you?
MNIBS: So the music that I’ve been making is kind of a blend of psychedelic pop, space rock, cosmic pop, and new wave. I’ve been tackling synth pop and synth punk, every now and then. It usually comes out as kind of like, dreampop, mostly. I’ve recently taken a deep dive into art-pop, and I think that fits more because everything that I’m doing is home recording and pretty amateurish, but despite it being how it is, it doesn’t sound like I don’t know how to make music. I’ve been doing it for years, you know. It’s just me, four keyboards, and Audacity.
BRC: Have you ever worked in a group setting or collaborated, or has it always been just you?
MNIBS: I’ve collaborated from time to time. I’ve given my voice to different artists who were producing. I’ve collaborated with a couple of friends on songs that haven’t come out yet, and I’m currently wondering whether or not this project that I’m currently working on – this big one – is one where I should be the most collaborative. Because there is a purpose, in terms of trying to let people know more about artists who just happen to be on the autism spectrum, as I am.
BRC: Is that the point of your new project? Is it a concept album?
MNIBS: It’s supposed to be a concert album – based on a little story that I wrote – which is tied to being black and autistic. There are thousands of albums about being black. Thousands. But very few of them tackle what it’s like to be neurodivergent or on the spectrum, directly.
BRC: That’s a very good point. In fact, I can’t think of many records that do that, full stop, really. Obviously, it’s a subject that’s talked about more these days, so the fact that you’re committing it to recorded work, I think, is a great idea to spread awareness and get people talking. People talk about mental health problems and conditions and stuff now more than ever, but yeah, you’re right, it doesn’t seem to be something that’s tackled much in music. I wonder why that might be?
MNIBS: The irony is – well, it’s not really ironic – but I am inspired by other kinds of people. I still think about how Kathleen Hanna was one of the artists who helped, not popularise, I guess, but bring to light riot grrrl, and how bands like Pansy Division or Team Dresch or any of that nature helped bring about the revolution of queercore. There are some bands that brought afropunk to light, and I think that autism doesn’t have a music scene in that vein, and I would love to bring that to life. One of the things I already have is a list of artists who just happen to be on the spectrum. Plenty of them have been doing music for years, but haven’t been given big attention. Some get by, and some don’t.
BRC: That’s really interesting. It definitely sounds like a worthwhile avenue to pursue. If you could create a scene or a sub-genre, that would definitely be worth doing.
MNIBS: It’s much more necessary now. Over here, we have people talking about trying to eradicate autism. Saying “in order to not have an autistic kid, you must blah blah blah”. I’m like, “you guys…fuck off.” We might not all be “good”. You know? There are some that are low functioning and some that are high functioning, but as long as you actually have the support, then that would not be an issue. And some people – especially parents, some parents – are just not equipped for that, but overall, as people, we’re still the same kind of people that anyone else is.
BRC: Yeah, definitely. I’m around autistic kids often, and they’ve definitely, obviously, quite clearly got things that they bring to the table that people who are not neuro-diverse in that way are simply not as equipped to be good at. Their fascination with details and specifics, and their information retention and recall, is incredible for some of them. They get fascinated with certain things or subjects, and they absorb information like sponges, and it’s really, actually quite inspiring and amazing when you witness them talk about the things they care about. There’s no way that that can’t be harnessed for the benefit of the arts as well, I believe, so I think that’s a great idea.
MNIBS: It’s something so fool-proof that I don’t know why people haven’t done it. Personally, I kind of understand, because there are so many things to tackle. From our approach to colours and extremity, to the way we dress and how people tend to really see us, unfortunately. Not everyone sees us in a negative manner, but some people really think that just because some of us are more functional than others, we still don’t need any help. It’s almost like too many people want to hold onto their ignorance rather than figure out some way to understand the people. I remember there was this joke by Roy Wood Jr. Do you know him?
BRC: No.
MNIBS: Roy Wood Jr. One of the things he said – it’s not really a joke, it’s just a statement – one of the things that they always do for a disabled veteran is that they love to talk positively about him. They love to say all these things about him and speak on his behalf. But they never give him the mic.
BRC: Interesting…
MNIBS: They talk a good game. Positive or negative. But it’s almost like, can we have our words a bit more? Or do we have to sneak ourselves in? Do we have to wait until we finally get to the stratosphere before “we say we’ve been autistic all this time”? And that’s the thing I hate.
BRC: Yeah, why would they need to be spoken for?
MNIBS: I hate when people know that we have autism or any kind of neurodivergent disability and use that as a measurement of how to look at us or to treat us in terms of what we can do. Not everyone was made for everything, but do not look at it in a condescending way. It doesn’t help anything, and it doesn’t help anyone.
BRC: I think a lot of that comes down to education. Some people are ignorant and don’t have a lot of knowledge of other people, and just live within their own little worlds and bubbles, and don’t understand. At least round here, I would say, anyway. I don’t know what the situation is like in America, although I imagine that ignorance is prevalent just based on some of the stuff we see in the media, so I can certainly imagine why that might be difficult.
MNIBS: I mean, that’s one of the reasons I embrace making music. Back when I first started making music, I didn’t think I had a purpose; I just wanted to be a singer-songwriter. But nowadays, my thing is, I can use music to educate.
BRC: Yeah, spread a message.
MNIBS: Use music as a way of telling people exactly how things are. Everybody loves listening to music. Everybody loves connecting to music.
BRC: Absolutely. It’s the universal communicator. You don’t even need to understand the language to enjoy it.
MNIBS: You don’t have to understand the language. You just have to enjoy the music. But some people will go beyond and listen to the lyrics.
BRC: So what stage is this project at, at the moment? This forthcoming project. It sounds really interesting.
MNIBS: Let’s just say, I’ve been working on it for years. I currently have a collection of songs, but I’m kind of the low-key perfectionist that I am, and I have a couple of songs, but I don’t really know how to shape that into a concept album. Like, I’m really on some… Let me see if I can name a concept album that – maybe something like Tommy or The Wall, I guess you could say?
BRC: Oh, OK – shooting big!
MNIBS: The whole story wraps around a character. The character is the one with autism, but instead of saying you have autism, you say that they’re a hybrid. ⅗ human, ⅖ extra-terrestrial. It’s kind of giving that, almost, Spock – where he is half human, half Vulcan. To use that as a way to say something.
BRC: So the hybrid thing is an analogy or allegory for living with autism…
MNIBS: Yeah – all that from his point of view, and the whole point of the story is to be like a diary.
BRC: And you said you’ve been working on it for years? I take it there’s not an anticipated due date?
MNIBS: Let’s say this. Back when I was signed to Tiergarten Records – which is a record label made for people who are neurodivergent – it was supposed to be my first album. Unfortunately, a whole lot of things got in the way. You know, the pandemic had inspired No Ordinary Summer, which was the first album I wrote under the name mynameisbluesky. Then, on the second album, I was just really scrambled and kind of down, and working through all that. So, this third album, I have a choice. I can either write an album about exactly what I’m talking about or – because of everything that’s going on right now, here in America – I can always just write about that. So I’m in the middle of either writing this double album or working on this big ass project. Either way, I always approach it from an album point of view. I’m always trying to write full albums, but also making sure the songs are good enough to the point where you’re not so focused on trying to make a cohesive album that you’ve forgotten that the songs have to be good!
BRC: Yeah, that makes sense.
MNIBS: So, it’s not like I’m not working on the project, it’s not like I’m being lazy. It’s just that other concepts wind up popping up, and these are concepts that I can’t help but write about because they mean so much that I wind up where the album ends up becoming a response.
BRC: So, do you feel like you’ve got two projects running concurrently, then, at the moment, the hybrid/autism story and also the one that’s influenced by everything else, or do you think there is space or scope for them to intertwine? Or do you think that’s too much? To make them work together?
MNIBS: I don’t think there’s space. I have always had those moments where, any time I’m creating, I always have one album I’m working on and another I’m working on at the same time. That’s why, back when, right around, say 2013/14, when cassettes were coming back to the underground, I embraced it. Like, I really love the format of side A and side B. It’s almost like any time you have to flip the tape, it’s an intermission. So you have one side, side A, with a couple of songs. Take a break, flip it over, and listen to the other songs. You can approach it in so many ways. You can either build a concept album which has one side of songs and the silence is an intermission, and it’s like act 1 and act 2. Or if you’re working on two different albums, and they just happen to be nice and short, you can put one album on one side and another album on the other. So I really loved when the cassette revolution of the underground was happening – because you should always be able to play around with format.
BRC: Yeah, I’ve only really got into cassettes. I mean, as a kid, growing up, they were my first real exposure to music because they were just so available and accessible, before moving onto CDs and then vinyl, but I feel like I’ve come back around to cassettes recently. Part of it for me is just because they’re so eminently affordable compared to records, you know? I love records as well, CDs I’m less invested in nowadays – I have an emotional disconnect from when I started streaming all those years ago and let almost all my CDs go, so now I feel more distanced from them as a format, I think – but yeah, cassettes I’m just sort of coming back around to. There’s definitely a nostalgic element to it, and also what you said about the ability to divide a work into two parts or to combine two smaller works on one thing – that is a great feature of them too. I think the cassette is an underrated format, actually.
MNIBS: Mm-hmn.
BRC: But obviously Start Track is doing their bit to make sure that people know that! So, one more thing I wanted to ask you about before we go was the Massachusetts local scene and how that looks for you. I tend to ask people about their area because I think it’s quite hard for people, wherever we are in the world, to have the perspective or understand or comprehend what that person’s world looks like and how it shapes their output…
MNIBS: The scene is, I guess you could say, interesting in a way. If there’s anything that I know about the Boston music scene, for the most part – and I don’t know if this is the case for most music scenes – but it’s like, when you make rock music, you make rock music. When you make hip-hop, you make hip-hop. The worst part about the Boston music scene is that we’re musically conservative, for the most part. There are other people making music, and it seems revolutionary – new and vibrant. Too many of us stick to music genres that feel almost like staying within a bubble. “This is hip-hop.” “This is rock.” “This is jazz.” And most jazz will be those who came out of school, and they’re playing an academic idea of jazz. It’s not like they came out and all of a sudden they’re making anything close to an Alice Coltrane or a Pharaoh Sanders kind of record. It’s obvious that they’re sticking to the formula that they were taught at Berkley College of Music.
BRC: So it sounds like you think there’s a lot of room for improvement and work to be done in the Boston music scene… Funnily enough, one of the things you touched on there – and it’s something that seems to get spoken about a lot these days – is how intermingled a lot of genres and styles have become over the years. When I was a kid, growing up, you were a rock fan, or a hip-hop fan, or a metal fan. There wasn’t really much splicing. Whereas nowadays, because everything is so accessible, a lot of people can be interested in and can do a lot of different things. It sounds like the Boston scene is not really doing that, which is interesting to hear.
MNIBS: I mean, some people do, but not enough. There are some people who are trying to break out and do revolutionary things, but it isn’t like we have our own regional sound. Like, if you were to listen to hip-hop from Houston, you know that’s that Houston, Texas sound. If you listen to rap from New York, you know what New York rap sounds like. You have Detroit techno. You have New York hardcore. Detroit hardcore. The DC punk scene. They all have their scenes, and they all have something about them and about their sound, where you’re not going to find that anywhere else. Maybe I’ve been living in Boston too long, but I don’t think we really have that. Boston used to have a music scene where everything that we do, nobody can do what we do.
BRC: How long ago would you say that era was? How long ago would you say that Boston lost its musical identity?
MNIBS: I believe a year or two ago, Dart Adams let me know that back in the ’80s, Boston was the reason why New York had that electro-rap sound. That Zulu Nation, Afrika Bambata – because we had Johnson Crew and other names – that was a big thing that apparently started in Boston. We had East Coast rap. We had jazz rap. Ed O.G. and Da Bulldogs, we had Guru from Gang Starr. We had our own indie rock scene. In the 90s, everyone was doing their own thing, but now… And again, I might be speaking as someone who has been in Boston all their life and has listened to a lot of different local music – but there are only a handful, I guess you could say, who are really doing their own shit, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve really broken out of the box enough. To the point where it feels like this band or this artist sounds like nothing else. I just told you – New York has a sound, Houston has a sound – California, they have that West Coast rap. Midwest Emo. Even emo is a genre in which it seems – “this is made in the Midwest” – it’s not the same if you were to go anywhere else. So it seems like any scene you go to, there’s something about the genre that can’t compare if you go elsewhere. And personally, I’m not very sure that we have that identity.
BRC: Yeah, I can definitely hear that based on what you’re describing coming from elsewhere. Sounds like Boston collectively has got some work to do!
MNIBS: I believe we still have Boston hardcore, but now that hardcore is a big thing due to Turnstile, Scowl, and Soul Glo, and plenty of bands – Boston hardcore needs to be on that. That would be wonderful, but it almost feels like Boston musically is a little too conservative in terms of the way they approach music and genre. It almost feels like anyone making music has most definitely done it academically and hasn’t been breaking out of the box as much as they could. And the moment you break out of the box is the moment that you start some sort of musical revolution, and you wind up creating a sound. There’s a reason that – when Prince was making music, he was blending new wave and funk music, in his own way – and they called that the Minneapolis Sound.
BRC: He was one of a kind.
MNIBS: So, the question I will always have for Boston is, are we going to have a Boston sound? What is the Boston sound? We have a very active scene. We have Boston indie rock. Black Boston. Boston electronic music – where there’s a whole lot of people messing around with synthesizers and stuff – but I’m forever going to be asking “if Boston had a sound, what would it sound like?”
BRC: That’s a good question – maybe you need to be the one to define it.
MNIBS: You’re from England, right?
BRC: Yes, indeed.
MNIBS: London has a jazz scene. I don’t know if the London jazz scene is different from anywhere else, but they have a pretty active jazz scene. They have a Garage. Grime. London has all its own shit. It has really revolutionized. Britpop. Brit rock. You have your own sound – your own stuff, and that’s what I will always love and always want to be a part of. I want to be a part of something that feels almost like – this is something that no one else can do, and even if you can do it, it’ll only be a pale imitation. We have American people, not that many, American people who want to bring crime to the States.
BRC: Hmmn. I mean… Worth a try, right? LOL.
MNIBS: So that’s where I am. Yes, we have an active scene in Boston, but I wish it seemed like we had something of our own.
BRC: That sounds like a reasonable desire to have. Just going back quickly to the American grime – do you have any examples? I’d love to hear what that sounds like.
MNIBS: What’s the name, umm? Mr. Jumanji?
BRC: Like the film?
MNIBS: Oh, MC Jumanji. He is part of a label called American Grime.
BRC: OK, cool. It seems quite unfathomable, but I’ll have to check it out.
MNIBS: All you’ve got to do is type American Grime, and you’ll wind up on the label or find a playlist and find a collection of people making music that sounds like American Grime.
BRC: Well, I’ll have to do that. I’ll look forward to hearing more about your project – either of them, when they see the light of day. I’ll look forward to hearing how they sound when they’re completed.
MNIBS: Well, thank you.
You can find mynameisbluesky on Instagram, YouTube, BlueSky, Tumblr, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and many more.
RIYL: Grandaddy, Daniel Johnston, The Flaming Lips & WHY?
Interview by The Black Rainbow Collective
