Music / Get To Know
Get to Know: Mumble Tide
Backed into a corner they’d call it alt-pop or sad-bop. But Gina Leonard and Ryan Rogers’ music is more thoughtful and eclectic than those labels do justice.
The duo that take their name from the world’s second highest tidal range share how their break up led to their best record yet, what it’s like working with Massive Attack’s Stew Jackson and why they love the Galleries.
Where did Mumble Tide come from?
is needed now More than ever
Mumble Tide began when Ryan Rogers and Gina Leonard splintered off to create their own project from a band they were working with; the duo have navigated a relationship and a break up, and released their debut record on May 1 – photo: @ma.riedutton
G: We were in a different project back in the day that started to crack in a few places. We became a romantic couple and started making tunes ourselves, very rough round the edges bedroom pop. We just wanted to make it fun again!
R: Around Covid we went full time into Mumble Tide and did a bunch of releases.
After lockdown we split up romantically, which is when the process of writing this album started. We still wanted to work together but couldn’t make sense of that after the relationship.
Gina was in London and would send me songs she’d written, and I’d work on them in my studio in Bristol. We had to rebuild the whole thing, and rediscover the reason for doing it, which was great.
G: We couldn’t stop, basically. We really love working with each other, we feel we have this perfect musical fusion of different influences and skillsets. So although we broke up we couldn’t leave each other behind fully.
So is the new album – Might As Well Play Another One (released May 1) – a pain record?
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G: Definitely. I was wobbling like a jelly in an earthquake.
It’s not just a break-up record though. Both of us struggled with mental health stuff, there were tricky times and the music was a real release.
One of the album’s themes is coming back to yourself, and the power of music. For a time after we split, I thought I shouldn’t do music anymore and got a corporate job in London. I thought I needed to be a proper person – then I realised that’s never going to happen.
I need to write songs. And although that was hard it was also amazing. Now I feel so happy to have music and lucky that I can still do it around other things. That’s a part of the album that I hope is relatable: it’s important to believe in what makes you happy, even when things get hard.
Talk us through the album…
R: This bank of tracks had real depth and Gina’s writing felt important.
We’d struck up a friendship with Stew Jackson, a producer who’s part of the Massive Attack group. We both thought it was time to push the sound to deeper places.
We built the songs around Gina’s vocal because it’s just so real. Stew encouraged us to lean into the uglier or sadder side of things.
G: I struggled with it – the vocals were dried out and exposing. At points I thought ‘I sound quite mental’ and they said yes, let’s lean into that!
As time’s gone on our sound has become more refined: people are saying it’s more mature.
Mumble Tide’s next Bristol show is at the Beacon on June 18 – photo: @onstage_photos_
R: We did get abit silly on the record though! It’s full of stupid saxophone sounds…
Stew’s a great and very revered producer, but we still have a lot of fun. Since this album, he’s thrown me some bones and we’ve done a few records together.
I now have a studio in St Werburgh’s where I do production work. The pool of new musicians and artists I’ve worked with and befriended is insane. I don’t think that exists anywhere else in the same way. London is very different – it’s harder, less forgiving. We’re kind of nerds…
G: London’s the cool kids; in Bristol you can be a weirdo and still be accepted!
How do you feel about the current scene in Bristol?
The pair are effusive about Bristol’s ‘friendly’ music scene, and credit Emily Breeze as an inspiration as well as a champion of their own work – they say she is “testament to the slog of it all,” releasing her “best music yet” this year – photo: Emily Breeze
R: It’s wild! We’ve been big fans of Breakfast Records for ages – Langkamer and Get Down Services are doing super well. Emily Breeze is an inspiration.
Alot of our friends are also in the jazz scene. It’s nice to have a foot in a few different places. In a way the scenes are better than ever, which is wild when you think about how hard it is for the industry: venues closing, lack of money, constant change.
You don’t meet a single person in Bristol who isn’t annoyed by the state of things but also working extra hard to keep going, represent and keep things alive. Bristol is a total haven and we love it here so much.
G: We’re grateful to the people supporting smaller venues and bands, buying merch… There’s a good culture around that here which is really important, with the industry becoming increasingly brutal.
And loads of bands supporting other bands: it’s a really special, friendly scene.
You celebrated an unusual Bristol landmark in a recent video…
R: I do ad hoc shifts as a receptionist in these huge buildings. One time I snuck Gina up to a vacant floor and we shot the album’s first video, The Rails. It was a huge, empty, disused space.
We wanted to continue that trend through the record. So we shot Pea Soup in the Galleries. It’s an odd space. Buildings like that used to be such a vibrant, vital part of the high street and now that era of shopping centre is dying. For people of our age group they’re such a nostalgic space. It’s odd to see that crumbling.
G: We really like it in there, the colours, the brickwork… The rooftop is amazing, there’s so much space and it’s got gorgeous views.
And it fits with the album in terms of, when something is struggling but there’s still a beauty to it.
Mumble Tide’s album Might As Well Play Another One is out on May 1 on Breakfast Records. They play Tamasene’s album launch at the Bristol Beacon on June 18.
Main image: Breakfast Records
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