Mazingo interview: “We wanted it to feel unsettling”

Following the warm reception of Hey You and their remarkable appearance in Memphis at the International Blues Challenge, Mazingo returns with Wait A Minute, an album where blues converses with rock, americana and much freer musical influences. The first single and music video are premiering exclusively on Blues Actu today, one day before the official release!

For the occasion, Andrew, Alexis and Félix look back on an album built around letting go and embracing the unexpected.

🎥 Watch the video premiere

🎙️ Mazingo interviewed by Cédric Vernet

Wait A Minute talks a lot about the passing of time and the need to slow down. Why was it important for you to address that today?

Andrew: We conceived our previous album a bit like a journey, imagining a road leading from one point to another. We invited the listener to get lost along the way, even to forget where they came from or where they were headed… the journey itself was what mattered. I think Wait A Minute offers a similar experience. This time, however, it’s less about the road and more about time. The idea remains the same: the past is what it was, the future is inevitably coming, but what really matters is this in-between moment we’re living right now. Wait A Minute secretly wishes to prolong that moment. We’re not outside of time, we’re fully inside it, enjoying it to the fullest.

As for the idea of taking a breath, I don’t think we’re the only ones feeling overwhelmed by a world that moves so fast, by the constant flow of information, misinformation, scandals and wars. Sometimes the first thing we need to do is simply breathe.

There’s blues, rock and americana on this record, but also almost Mexican and Balkan atmospheres. It sounds like you compose without stylistic boundaries.

Alexis: That’s a question we genuinely asked ourselves. Creativity has no limits other than what we enjoy, but what about coherence? With this album, we eventually found something that truly reflects who we are and that transcends stylistic boundaries. For us, it was a way of remaining coherent while freeing ourselves from expectations and continuing to stimulate our creativity through different moods and influences.

This idea of travel comes up frequently when you talk about the album…

Alexis: We eventually realised that the album sketches out a kind of journey, and we felt that openness was essential in a world where borders tend to close rather than open. We also like to think of ourselves as explorers. Music allows us to travel between worlds and create new ones by blending them together.

Rattlesnake arrives with a huge rock’n’roll sound and a highly visual video. Did you want to make a strong first impression?

Félix: Choosing which song would best introduce the album was a real dilemma. In the end, we went with the bite, the one that catches you by surprise and never lets go. We needed something animalistic and fierce to open the record, something that could shake things up and drive out our demons. There’s something very controlled yet completely uncontrollable about this song, and that’s exactly the line we wanted to walk.

On stage, we sweat a lot. Rock energy is central to our live show. After thinking it through, it became the obvious choice as an opening statement.

“We wanted it to feel unsettling”

The video pushes this feverish and disturbing atmosphere even further…

Félix: As far as the video is concerned, we wanted it to feel unsettling, like a nasty cold you just can’t shake off. A fever that gradually turns into hallucinations. To achieve that, we were incredibly fortunate to work with an amazing team (Eric Genillier on cinematography, Pierre Bourgeois directing and Amaury Voslion editing), who managed to translate those ideas into an aesthetic that feels both Lynchian and Tarantino-esque.

It ended up being even stranger and more twisted than we had imagined. And that’s perfect, because being surprised is exactly what we were looking for.

After Memphis and the International Blues Challenge, along with festival appearances, radio airplay and the response to Hey You, do you feel people look at Mazingo differently today? Is there more pressure?

Andrew: We are extremely grateful for the reception our previous album Hey You received, particularly within the blues scene and in Memphis. That music, and that community, has been a foundation that gave us a great deal of strength. But the pressure is always there whenever you present new songs or a new show, especially when you’re playing for people who already know you. Will they like it? Is it honest? Is it right?

But within the family I’m talking about, whether it’s the audience, industry professionals or fellow musicians, what matters most is expressing what lies deep inside of you without compromise or artifice. Their perspective encourages us to lay everything on the line, and that’s incredibly liberating. I feel we’re still doing exactly that. Perhaps even more than before.

The title track Wait A Minute was kept in a very raw, almost live version. Why?

Félix: The first time we played that song together, we had three chords, a rough idea of the structure and a few lyrics scribbled in a notebook. A handful of microphones had been set up in the rehearsal room simply to capture some ideas for later. We jumped in without a safety net and without really knowing what would happen, except that we desperately wanted to play the song. And something rather magical happened.

We were literally discovering the song while recording it. The guitar cable started malfunctioning, we didn’t really follow the planned structure… it became a succession of happy accidents and last-minute recoveries. Nothing worked, yet everything worked.

Was it precisely that imperfection you wanted to preserve?

Félix: We immediately knew we would never be able to recreate that take with the same spontaneity and imperfections. The idea of keeping it exactly as it was for the album appealed to us greatly. In an era of highly controlled recordings, polished down to the smallest detail, you often lose the essence of what you originally set out to do.

It’s not always easy to recapture the freedom of that first moment. Keeping something that had completely escaped our control felt like a gift we were giving ourselves, and also a gift to anyone who would enjoy listening to the album.

You also sing in French on this album. How does that affect your writing?

Alexis: French has always had a place in Mazingo, ever since our first EP was released in 2020. We are committed to defending multiculturalism as a source of richness. We present ourselves as a Franco-American band, not only because Andrew grew up in a bicultural environment, but also because French lyrics naturally coexist alongside songs written in English.

Sans Queue Ni Tête completely deconstructs the traditional blues form…

Alexis: Sans Queue Ni Tête is actually the only true blues form on the album, and we wanted to dismantle it completely. First because the vocal delivers the poem in a monolithic way without following the traditional structure, and also because it is the only song featuring an electronic touch, with keyboards and arpeggiators blending into the very traditional sounds of banjo and violin. The vocal layers keep stacking throughout the song, creating something almost incantatory.

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