New Music
Interview
Milan Ring: “As I started exploring, I knew I wanted to get more knowledge”
The genre-crossing musician talks about the power of staying curious and embracing happy accidents in life
Since her debut album, 2021’s I’m Feeling Hopeful, Milan Ring has made clear she refuses to be put in a music box. Swapping luscious vocals with rapping, and floaty R&B grooves with incandescent guitars and exploratory electronics, the album funnelled the unruly emotions of lockdown in a stunning, entirely self-penned and self-produced statement of independence.
Currently on tour and joining our video chat from a street in San Francisco, the musically restless Milan, dubbed an icon of “Australia’s R&B renaissance” by the press down under, confesses that she struggles with the R&B label despite the obvious influences – ever-curious about the next new thing, chasing inspiration in different directions and learning all she can as she carves her universe in sound. And art. “I’m getting more and more interested in how you can blend the visual worlds. Even though I’ve done a lot of visual stuff, I feel like I hadn’t thought about it as much as I am now in terms of doing mini-directorial movies with the next music.”
Released in May 2024, following Ring’s life-altering move from Sydney to Berlin, her second album Mangos takes her musical and visual aspirations a few sun-kissed steps further. An inherently summery LP capturing a year in her life, it spells love in every soul-tingling turn, sprawling between sparks of electronic playfulness and a dreamlike nostalgia echoed, among others, in the use of Midi guzheng – an updated version of the Chinese harp her grandmother used to play. Nominated for Best Soul/R&B release in Australia’s prestigious ARIA awards, it affirms Milan’s firm presence in her home country as she creatively reaches further and further afield.
You wear many hats, singer-songwriter, guitarist, sound engineer, producer…
I had such a curiosity to understand how sound is made and recorded and manipulated. I wanted to really be hands on. I think my very first times writing songs, when I had another producer or I was kind of relying on other people, I had this energy I didn’t know where to place. As I started exploring, I knew I wanted to get more knowledge. So I did a diploma in sound engineering and production to help me with that, but a lot of it is just self-discovery and I feel like I’m still on that journey of enhancing my skill set. I really like to be able to create my own world and also work alone. I love working with other people but I also just really like to go… you know… the hours slip away and I just go off into a tangent. Any tangent.
There’s also, I suppose, a level of independence you can achieve that way?
Absolutely, yeah. It’s a funny industry and obviously it’s a boys club. I wanted to be able to rely on myself. I still collaborate with people often but I can really understand what it is they’re doing, I can speak the language and I can also just pick the right people and not have to make compromises, because I’m so passionate and really want the music to get done.
To me, your guitar playing is as evocative as your vocals. It feels like such a distinctive part of you, but it doesn’t get as recognised in some ways?
I don’t know… I kinda feel like my voice and my guitar playing are one and the same. The way I sing is influenced by my guitar, the way I play guitar is influenced by the way I sing. I think at times I’ve been, like, “why isn’t someone hitting me up for just a guitar feature?” But I guess they often want everything, like “can you add some production and your voice and some guitars?” and I’m like, “okay”.
So… why Mangos?
I guess my first album is a little bit more serious and, having performed that for a few years, I just wanted to step into a different place. I also was in a different place in my life, I really wanted to be a bit more silly and playful with the production. Τhere was this one song I was working on called “Μangos”. Ηonestly, it’s just a really silly lyric that’s like, “See my man goes where the mangos always fruit”. I was talking about a summertime romance, it was really not deep at all. The beat was more the focal point of the song. And then, I don’t know, something about mangos just stuck. I love the colour yellow, if you’ve noticed, and I just thought it was a playful step away from a slightly more in depth, kind of a mental health, deeper approach to the first album.
You sing on ‘Quicksand’: “Climbing the ladder. Glass ceiling won’t shatter”. You talk about greed and ambition. Are there other themes apart from the fun stuff –which is just as valid by the way – that you delve into in this album?
Thank you for recognising that. ‘Quicksand’ for me was like the tether to album one. Cause album one was very much about forgiveness, acceptance, understanding of interpersonal relationships and mental health and addiction. For me, it’s very hard to open up any doors to love if there is not this love of self, or at least acceptance and forgiveness. So, the chorus saying “Let me land”, you know, the grounding of love. Not necessarily the love of anyone else but the love that you can give yourself. Maybe you get that from a higher power, maybe someone else helps you get there or maybe you get there by yourself.
Obviously, there’s deeper things you can extrapolate from the lyrics but, ultimately, it’s like you’re in the quicksand if you don’t have this grounding and this self-acceptance of where you’re at, and forgiveness for anything in your life.
Having that foundation can allow you to grow. We can only do the best we can with the tools we have at the time. That’s why I wanted to open the album with that, so then go into like, okay, now I’m maybe open to a romantic kind of love, and feeling a bit more full in myself to be able to hopefully meet someone halfway, if that makes sense.
It does, actually. I like that you make that connection and turn it around to the love of self.
It’s both. There are the ones that are clearly romantic and then, towards the end, there’s ‘Sanctuary’, which is about being present in nature and just letting go of all the noise and the clutter, and have a bit of spirituality at some degree.
Tell us more about all your different experiments in this album. Is it the first time that you use the guzheng? What other sounds did you get to explore?
One of the textures I added, which I hadn’t really done before, was the nylon-string guitar. My first guitar was a nylon-string Spanish classical guitar, I always have one at home just sitting there. So I was like, “why don’t I record it?” Then I even got this nylon-string, a different one. Finger-picking, it’s a very different way of playing, it sounds very contrasting to how I play electric guitar. Those textures are there. The guzheng was something I explored on a few songs. And I think for me just going off into different production… A little bit of electronic, kind of poppy sounds. I was just being very playful, honestly, and just going with my first instincts. I think I could have a tendency to overwork things and be a perfectionist, over-cook it and kinda lose the essence.
I read that your philosophy during the making of the album was “less is more”, but that doesn’t always translate. Mangos sounds quite lush and psychedelic at times. In what ways did you apply that philosophy, you think?
I had a big whiteboard in my lounge room and it said “less is more” over the top. I had all the songs and in my little notes I had “add guzheng, add…” etc, you know. I could have added a lot more layers to every song. But I think of that philosophy in terms of remembering to refer back to the initial kind of demos, which are usually the first beat iteration – guitars, vocal, maybe another little element, bass and that’s it. But from there, I want interest and dynamics, and I want little ear surprises and earworms, and stuff to jump in for even just myself to be interested in listening to the whole song. But it’s a fine balance, I’m not saying I’ve perfected that yet. I’m excited for the next music to come cause I’m only growing in those areas to have more intuition – and perhaps more restraint.
Ηow do these sounds translate live? Are you solo on stage?
Yeah, that’s a good question. Every song I treat a little bit differently and then I also balance that within the set. But yes, I do perform alone currently, having moved to Europe and doing these first gigs, and now I’m in the States touring. It’s really finding the right people to play with, but also there’s something kind of interesting with playing solo because I can exchange the set as I go. I’ve got my two guitars, they’re named: one, my Fender Stratocaster is called “Creamy”, my nylon-string is called “Wes”. I name them because I make a joke that they’re my friends on stage. And then I have this loop-over kinda sampler device, which sometimes I also joke about, that I’ve melted my band into this little machine and they’re in there!
But yeah, I suppose to let people know I’ve produced the music, and mix the music. Cause we’re so used to going out and seeing DJs and producers press play – and do more, you know, no shade. But I think, as long as people know I’m not just pressing “play” on a backing track…I add layers, I’ll play a beat in, I’ll kind of build the track up as I go. I do a few songs that are just “Wes” the nylon-string and my voice. Very acoustic, singer-songwriter-esque moments as well as beats. Yeah, it’s fun!
That’s what’s so special about being live as well, offering that immediacy that you wouldn’t necessarily have in the studio.
Exactly, yeah. I think sometimes people get caught up that it all has to sound exactly the same as on the record. And I don’t think so – I think moments do. I think a lot of my songs I sing better now, for example, from the first album. I actually haven’t listened to the record in a while, mind you, but I hope that I’m growing. It’s also, like, people know if I’m enjoying it or not, playing it how I want it live. One of the songs I do, ‘Hands Are Tied’, it wasn’t a single or a standout song on the first album but I play that, just the nylon-string and my voice. Because that’s how I wrote it. It was just me, sitting outside… and then I ended up playing an electric guitar, I added in all these drums. But I think it’s actually a bit more special in its essence.
You’re currently on the road. Any standout moments so far?
I have a really funny standout moment! My very first show in New York, at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Very excited, had butterflies a little bit per usual. And about 20 seconds into the first song the power cut out. Not because of me, like, everything did on stage.
A musician’s nightmare!
And I’m playing electric guitar at the time, playing my sampler, using a microphone that’s going through it so, obviously, everything gone. It was half-full, the venue, there were still people coming in. I just went off mike and started talking to everyone. It was a happy accident that I couldn’t imagine the show without. We were all together, everyone was kinda having a laugh. And then I was like, “thank you for fixing the sound” and we just started again and everyone was cheering and was there with me. I think it’s those moments that remind us, “I’ve seen this live. These are real people”. Sometimes things are too polished. Obviously, I do my best, and practice and everything but these moments happen, and I think that’s the beauty of life. It’s how you take it on.
