Rare Pleasure

“This album started as a means of expressing my personal healing, but as it progressed, I had an epiphany,” LA-based producer Mndsgn, aka Ringgo Ancheta, tells Apple Music. “I realized it was such a rare opportunity just to be able to share the gift of music, and that it’s such a pleasure to be making music together. That’s where the title came from, as a celebration of that creativity.” Since his 2014 debut, *Yawn Zen*, Ancheta has established himself as one of the West Coast’s most distinctive producers, laying down head-nodding rhythms and woozy, crate-digging vocal soul for the likes of Danny Brown, Doja Cat, and Tyler, The Creator. Although he began writing *Rare Pleasure* in 2018, the ensuing years brought new meaning to his evolving compositions: The interjection of the pandemic heightened the rarity of making music collaboratively. The result is 13 tracks that feature his singing voice more prominently than ever before, crooning on the love ballad “Slowdance,” exploring family difficulties on the tentatively optimistic “Hope You’re Doin’ Better,” and channeling ethereal soundtrack jazz on “Medium Rare.” “I was thinking, ‘What kind of record would I make if this was the last one I made?’” he says. “If I died or if I just stopped making music altogether, what would I want to get out in this project? So, that was what made the cut.” Here, he talks about each of the tracks that did. **Rare Pleasure I** “I’m really inspired by soundtrack music, and one of my favorite composers in that world is Piero Piccioni, an Italian composer from the 1970s. That’s what inspired me to have different versions of the same song threaded through the record. This ‘Rare Pleasure’ theme was just an idea of getting the band to play the same progression in numerous ways when we were in the studio. This first version just sets it out for the rest to come.” **Truth Interlude** “This is a cover of a Brazilian radio jingle from the 1970s. A while back, someone shared with me this mix of different jingles from this one Brazilian radio station. And ever since then, I’ve been really fascinated with them. The harmonies are always crazy since you have to get so much feeling in such a short amount of time and really capture a specific mood on a jingle. It’s a great exercise in composition.” **3Hands/Divine Hand I** “This song was inspired by a time I was FaceTiming my partner, and while she was talking to me, she had this mannequin hand that she was playing with. After we got off the phone, I wanted to write about it, and the track ended up being about the hand representing God and that unseen guidance we can feel throughout life. Having a connection with that gives you such an upper hand in navigating through life. It’s better than just your two physical hands—you need the unseen force.” **Hope You’re Doin’ Better** “My dad was going through a really tough time when I was writing this, and he was just pushing everybody away. He was in a state of isolation and not willing to allow people in. Eventually, I found myself having to access whatever non-physical connection that I had with him to send love his way. That’s why I wrote this song for him, and I’m talking about picking up your phone because we would call him and he wouldn’t answer. This was my way of communicating my care.” **Rare Pleasure II** “I wanted to have the presence of recurring themes and motifs, because that’s just how life works—sometimes you have to experience certain things over and over again, but in different circumstances. This version has a mellow, downbeat vibe to it with the backing vocals holding the melody.” **Slowdance** “‘Slowdance’ is a ballad about really taking your time to get to know your partner and also taking the time to develop your connection with your craft and your community. It was mostly inspired by meeting my partner and savoring those initial stages of getting to know each other, when I feel like there’s so much gold in being patient and allowing things to unfold in a natural and non-contrived way.” **Abundance** “‘Abundance’ ties in with the soundtrack vibe I’m influenced by. There’s spaghetti Westerns revolving around characters named Ringgo, and this feels like a track for a Western Ringgo. This was one of the first tunes that I wrote for the record, inspired by going through certain library music or jazz records that I have and trying to transcribe the songs, and then trying to rearrange the transcription in an original way. I was going to write vocals to it, but I felt like it served a better purpose as an interlude piece. It does a good job of gluing together the first side into the second side of the record.” **Masque** “This trips me out the most because it was written way before the pandemic. I was concerned that it would come out at the wrong time, and people would think that I was trying to tell you not to wear masks or something. But all of that aside, it has nothing to do with an actual mask. It’s really a song about being transparent and trying to transcend from that persona that we wear and use on a day-to-day basis, and really letting your core self shine instead.” **Rare Pleasure III** “I thought it would be fun to do a version of the theme as slowly as possible when we were all fired up in the studio—something to really sink into as a break from the progression of the surrounding tracks.” **Medium Rare** “That was one of the earliest cuts that I wrote for the record. I wrote it in its entirety, as the lyrics just flowed out of me. It’s more of a letter to myself than anything else, telling me to take care of myself. It’s mostly me singing on the track, too, which is such a milestone compared to previous works. It was a good feeling to get this one out early, because it really set the tone for what the rest of the record was going to sound like.” **Rare Pleasure IV** “By the time we got to recording this version, everyone was warmed up in the studio and really having fun. All the musicians on the record killed it, especially the core trio of Swarvy on bass and guitar, Kiefer on keys, and Will Logan on drums—they’re all at the top of their game, and I had to give hardly any direction at all. We just ran with it.\" **Colours of the Sunset** “This is probably my favorite track on the album right now. It was the only one written during the pandemic, when I was just sitting in my studio, listening to the instrumental over and over again, waiting until the lyrics came to me. I was looking out of my window and could see the sunset—LA gets such crazy sunsets, all pinks and purples and cotton candy textures—and it felt like I was channeling that, like it was cowritten by the sky.” **Divine Hand II** “This is the outro for ‘3Hands,’ which was too long to keep as one piece. I decided to split it in half, and it ended up wrapping up the record very nicely, because it reaches an apex and then you break through into this ethereal space. I wanted to convey going from darkness to light.”

Whereas Rare Pleasure the band dealt out disco, Rare Pleasure the album emanates breezy soul and tosses a couple neo-Brazilian fusion curveballs like it's under a lysergic spell cast by Earth, Wind & Fire, George Duke, and Ronnie Laws in those artists' gentler moments during the same era.

Check out Rare Pleasure if you get the chance. Sound of the summer. It's another varied, sun-dappled bit of fun from MNDSGN