‘Looking For Space’ with Mild Orange
Words by Hannah Powell. Images by Kenzie Pigman and Cam Hay.
Yo Vocal had a chat with Josh Mehrtens, lead singer of Aotearoa band Mild Orange. A few weeks prior to release, we unpacked the music, meaning and lyrics from their third studio album, ‘Looking For Space’. Prepare to play this album on repeat.
The album begins with a drum before that distinctive riff. Sound embraces, a salve to your senses, and a feeling begins to drift. It’s that feeling when you see home from a plane window or that moment you get the keys to your car. It’s waiting in the GA line of a festival, hearing the main stage, or that moment before a kiss in the dark. It’s anticipation or opportunity – well, both of them fit. Mild Orange’s new album ‘Looking For Space’ is eleven tracks of sonic bliss. It’s an album for transience, for departure, arrival, and most importantly, those times in-between. It’s for that main character shit, and if you needed a sign to romanticise your life, consider this it.
Foreplay and Mild Orange was about romance, love, and relationships, Josh says, but Looking For Space prioritises philosophical reflection. “It’s still about relationships between friends and lovers,” he says. “But now, it’s more about a relationship with the self and the world around you.”
Mild Orange are Josh Mehrtens (vocals, guitar, production, mixing and artwork), Josh Reid (lead guitar), Tom Kelk (bass guitar) and Jack Ferguson (drums). Looking For Space is their third album to be released.
Recorded in six different places around New Zealand and produced, mixed, and engineered by Josh M and Paddy Hill from Roundhead Studios, Looking For Space is a solid step-up from Mild Orange’s previous sound. When Josh was mixing it solo, he told me he got to ‘What’s Your Fire?’ and wanted something bigger.
“I took it to Paddy at Roundhead Studios to try and awaken that stadium sound we were looking for,” he says. “Collaborating with him absolutely opened us to a whole [lot of] new sonic possibilities.”
The collaboration didn’t stop there. The band worked with international videographers and animators from LA to Indonesia to accompany their single’s release. The video for ‘The Time of our Lives’ was directed and filmed by Tomoyuki Kujirai in Japan. It was inspired by a trip Mehrt took there by himself, where he spent his travels skateboarding and making mates. Their latest video for ‘Oh Yeah’ was filmed in Biarritz, France, by Simon Levalois-Bazer (a fan-based there).
Josh tells me how awesome it is collaborating internationally and how much it has influenced and inspired their work. “Our main mission has always been to be from New Zealand to the world and to create content and experiences and moments that people can relate to from all over.”
But as much as they love to travel, New Zealand has a special place within their sound. “I never want to overlook how important New Zealand is to us in all of this [music]. Aotearoa is so influential to us, and where we go to record”. Recording from mountain to sea, each track has been shaped by these spaces of temporary residency.
Talking about space, I ask what’s behind the name. Looking for Space, it turns out, is exactly that. The meaning behind it, on the other hand, is up to you. It’s looking for space of where you belong, where you think you want to be. Or it is trying to find space for yourself, to find peace in yourself, Josh says. But it could also be literally looking for space, giving people, or instruments space, or perhaps, giving yourself space to inhale, exhale and grow.
Creating all of the visuals for the album, Josh said he wanted to make the visuals feel like the sound, trying to feel things as colourised rather than black and white. As he ran a pile of the band’s black and white film photos through colourising software, he was able to better understand the visual elements of the project. As the software found tones and shadows, it turned it into colour, and that’s when the visual relationship between the first track, ‘Colourise’, and the last track, ‘Photographics’, began.
‘Colourised’ explores an outlook for life. “Trusting the waves,” Josh says. “If you never try, you’ll never know what’s ahead.” To bookend it, ‘Photographics’ is about discovering what you do know, but knowing that at the end of the day, life remains a mystery – and that is what is beautiful about it. There’s always something to ponder, he says, and always something to find.
“[In the band], we’ve all figured out how we find space with each other to serve the songs.” They’re stronger together, Josh explains.
On the album, his top three favourite songs are ‘Music’, ‘Aurora’, and ‘This Kinda Day’.
‘Music’ (a title, Josh laughs, that is as simplistic as you can get) came about after his experiences being sick during the making of the album. Pushing through a double-whammy of pneumonia and pleurisy, managing the pain meant a hefty dose of drugs and trouble breathing. In his spaced-out state, he couldn’t do what he loved: make music. It was an a-ha moment to realise self-care came first, to be able to do what he loved, second.
‘Aurora’, meaning new dawn, follows ‘What’s Your Fire’ on the tracklist – think dust settled; storm cleared, waters calm. “It’s this realisation that you have this one life, don’t waste it - go out there and live”. Sonically, think seedy nightclub with a side of Chazelle’s Whiplash, Josh says.
Coming in third is ‘This Kinda Day’. “One I can always put on in most moments and really enjoy,” he says. Lyrically, it means a lot to Josh, and where post-sickness, his new perspective is explored. We both agree it’s a thoughtful song, where cleverly simple, has been done well. He says, “it all just sounds like bliss to me.”
With a bit of stadium and guitar-tricked synth, there’s no doubt that Mild Orange has levelled up. Their self-proclaimed sound of melting melodies remains distinct, timeless, and intact. They’re driving the same car but on a new road, and there’s no synthesiser insight.
“You’re never feeling the same when you listen to music, and that goes the same when you’re creating. You’re not always going to create the same stuff,” Josh explains. “Change is hard, but change is good.”
Where did Josh find his space? In Baden, in Switzerland, at an old cinema-turned-music-venue where they played a show. Their album cover art is a photograph Josh took on that night by the venue. “That was when I was truly like, yeah, this is my space, and this is what I want to pursue”. Two years later, as he began mixing Looking For Space, he found the image he was looking for and tweaked it in tandem with tinkering with the album.
“It looked like what [the album] sounded to me,” he says. Transient, meaningful, and enjoyed from A to B.