14 FAKTS INTERVIEW WITHKWEN

SIB debuts on MINDGAME Records with his Set Me Free EP, featuring remixes from Kashovski and KWEN.

Closing the EP is KWEN, the Paris-born producer and manager of MINDGAME Records, making his long-overdue debut on the label he co-founded with the duo Birds of Mind in 2020. His latest release on Unreleased, Arodes' imprint, has attracted widespread support from leading artists around the world. Here, he delivers a hypnotic and melodic interpretation of the original, rich in texture and emotion, culminating in a spine-tingling breakdown.

The Set Me Free EP lands on MINDGAME Records as a showcase of French talent, just in time to become a late-summer favourite.

Q: Please introduce yourself

Hi, I’m KWEN, DJ and producer from Paris, and also the manager of MINDGAME Records, the label I co-founded with my partners Birds of Mind in 2020.

Q: One person you'd dream to have a coffee with?

I would probably say Laurent Garnier. He’s a true pioneer, a legend of the French electronic music scene, and actually one of the people who really made me fall in love with electronic music when I was younger.

I’ve always been fascinated by his musical culture and the way he can navigate through so many different genres without ever losing his identity. He’s also lived through so many different eras of electronic music, so I think I could just sit there for hours listening to his stories and talking about music. 

Q: If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

I think I’d love to be able to control time - both stop it and travel back in it.

Stopping time would be amazing, especially in the studio. When you’re really in that creative zone, you completely lose track of time, so being able to freeze everything and stay in that moment for as long as you want would be pretty special.

But travelling back in time would probably be the real dream. There are just so many moments in music history I would have loved to witness firsthand - Hendrix at Woodstock, seeing a young Biggie freestyle on the streets of Brooklyn, spending a night at The Warehouse with Frankie Knuckles, experiencing Ibiza in the late ’80s, or Berlin just after the fall of the Wall.

I could probably keep going forever, but being able to witness some of those moments before they became part of music history would be incredible.

Q: If you would have been given the chance to do a film score, what movie would you choose and why?

That’s a tough one. There are probably a few, especially films where the music has become such an iconic part of their identity.

La Haine by Mathieu Kassovitz would definitely be one of them. Growing up in Paris and having been so influenced by hip-hop, it’s a film I’ve always felt connected to artistically.

Then probably True Romance. I’ve always loved that film, and I think it’s one of the most unusual love stories ever put on screen. Tarantino wrote it before Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and there’s a very particular energy in the way it blends romance, violence and humor, which I’ve always found absolutely brilliant. It already has such a distinctive soundtrack, but I would have loved the challenge of creating a completely different musical world around it.

And Trainspotting would definitely be up there. It’s such a timeless film, and I mean, Born Slippy has become completely iconic and almost inseparable from it. The movie and its soundtrack really capture such a particular moment in ’90s pop culture. I would have loved to get my hands on that one.

All three already have such strong musical identities that it’s almost impossible to imagine them differently, but that’s exactly why I would have loved the challenge of creating my own musical universe around them. 

Q: Who influenced you the most in your music career and why?

It’s very difficult for me to name one artist because my influences came from completely different places. I was surrounded by music from a very young age, coming from a family of professional musicians, and I think that environment probably shaped me more than any single artist ever could.

Through them, I was first exposed to a lot of jazz and blues. Then, as I started playing guitar myself, I went through a big rock phase, which opened up a completely different musical world for me.

Hip-hop came after that and became a real obsession for quite a few years - that’s also when I really started digging for music, discovering samples and going deeper into where sounds came from. Around that time, I also started working closely with Merty Shango, a New York artist I would go on to work with for over a decade, who had a big influence on that chapter of my musical life and is still one of the most talented hip-hop artists I’ve ever come across.

Electronic music had always been part of the picture throughout all of this, but at some point it gradually started taking over everything else.

I think every one of those periods shaped a different part of my musical identity. Even though they can seem quite far from each other, I still find elements of all of them in the way I listen to music, DJ and produce today. So in a way, I don’t think I have one main influence - it’s probably the combination of all these different musical chapters that shaped me the most. 

Q: Tell us about your journey, what got you to where you are today?

Music has always been part of my life since I was a kid, but turning it into an actual career happened much more gradually. Before I even started DJing, I was already completely immersed in electronic music - going to as many shows and festivals as I could, seeing countless DJs and really experiencing the scene from the other side of the booth. I think those years taught me a lot without me even realizing it at the time.

I started DJing around twelve years ago, initially just driven by the desire to share the music I was constantly discovering and digging. From there, things evolved quite naturally - I started playing more, travelling for shows, and eventually moved into production as I felt the need to express my own musical identity beyond just the records I was playing.

A major step in that journey was launching MINDGAME Records in 2020 with my partners and close friends, Birds of Mind. I already had a lot of respect for what they were doing musically, and as we became closer, we naturally started sharing ideas and eventually decided to build something together, which became MINDGAME.

Building the label while developing my own artist project has been a huge learning experience. It put me on both sides of the process - not only thinking about my own music and career, but also discovering artists, releasing their music and helping shape a wider musical identity through the label.

Since then, the journey has taken me to play in many different parts of the world and meet some incredible people along the way. I think where I am today is really the result of all those experiences coming together - my musical roots, DJing, producing, travelling, constantly digging for music, and of course building MINDGAME along the way. They’ve all shaped different parts of who I am as an artist today, and I still feel like there’s a lot more to come.

Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone just starting out their career in music?

Probably not to be in too much of a rush. Today there’s so much pressure to release quickly, create content, get bookings and constantly show that something is happening. It can become a huge source of frustration, especially when things don’t happen as fast as you’d like them to.

I think it’s really important not to lose sight of why you started in the first place. You have to genuinely love music and do it for yourself before anything else. Take the time to develop your taste and your own identity, listen to as much music as possible, dig beyond what’s immediately in front of you, go to shows, meet people, make mistakes and don’t be afraid of changing direction.

There will always be someone releasing more music, playing bigger shows or seemingly moving faster than you, but everyone’s journey is different. If the love for music remains at the center of it, I think it’s much easier to stay focused and enjoy the process rather than constantly chasing the next thing. In the long run, having your own identity and doing something that genuinely feels like you is much more valuable than following whatever happens to be working at that moment.

Q: Can you recall a DJ set or performance of yours that remains unforgettable to you? Where did it take place, and what makes it stand out among all others?

One that immediately comes to mind happened two years ago in Costa Careyes, Mexico, for the wedding of one of my close friends, who had basically organized a private festival for the occasion. One of the events took place in one of the most unreal venues I’ve ever seen - a villa on top of a cliff, surrounded by kilometers of jungle.

I had just finished a new track while I was in Mexico, and I played it for the very first time during the set, right as the sun was setting. The reaction and the whole moment were just magical - the venue, the sunset, hundreds of friends all connecting through the music… you really had to live it.

That moment stayed with me so much that, as a tribute to that night and to my friend, I ended up naming the track after the villa: Occidente. A year later, the track was released on Arodes’ Unreleased Records, and it’s still one of the tracks that carries the strongest memories for me.

Q: How has your music style evolved over the years?

Quite a lot, but I think that’s only natural. Your taste evolves over the years, and at the same time you keep accumulating more and more music. When I first got into electronic music, I spent a lot of time going back through its history, discovering older records and digging into different periods and scenes. So over the years, I’ve collected a lot of those timeless gems that have stayed with me and that I still love playing today.

Over time, I’ve also become much less interested in defining music by genre. My sets today can move between house, indie, and melodic, mixing older records with more contemporary music, but there’s usually an emotional thread connecting everything.

I think over the years I’ve become much more instinctive in the way I approach music, focusing less on categories and more on the connections I can create between records.

Q: If you were to venture into another music genre, which one would you choose and why?

Definitely hip-hop. It’s probably the genre outside of electronic music that has had the biggest place in my life. I’ve always loved how much it can absorb from other genres - jazz, soul, funk, rock - and turn all those influences into something completely different.

I’ve always been fascinated by everything around the hip-hop culture - the producers and the art of sampling, but also the artists, the writing, the punchlines and the whole creativity around the use of words. DJ Mehdi is a great example for me - the way he managed to move between hip-hop and electronic music and bring those two worlds together was pretty unique. I think that crossover is something I’ve always connected with.

Q: Could you name 3 tracks that got you into electronic music and why?

This one is difficult because there are so many tracks that I associate with different periods of my life. When I first got into electronic music, I spent a lot of time going back and discovering the records that had shaped it before I found it myself. Moby’s Go was definitely one of them, as well as Daft Punk’s Homework album - tracks like Da Funk and Alive in particular. They’re all-time classics that inspired generations of artists and definitely had a huge impact on me.

Then a little later, discovering artists like Maceo Plex and Nicolas Jaar was another turning point for me, but for very different reasons. Tracks like Maceo Plex’s remix of Röyksopp’s Sordid Affair or Solitary Daze with Gabriel Ananda showed me a darker, more emotional and melodic side of club music, while Nicolas Jaar’s Mi Mujer opened the door to something much more organic, unconventional and harder to put into a box. Both really expanded my idea of what electronic music could be.

It’s almost impossible to narrow it down to three, but those are definitely some of the records and artists that shaped my relationship with electronic music.

Q: Can you recommend a hidden gem in your home country that would be perfect for a rave?

I would probably choose the Calanques de Cassis, in the South of France. It’s honestly one of the most beautiful places in the country - incredible cliffs, crystal-clear water, hidden coves and this very raw, almost untouched landscape.

Obviously, you’d have to imagine a world without noise restrictions or protected areas! But I’d picture a beautiful beach tucked between two cliffs, with the DJ booth right by the water. An all-day, all-night party, starting under the sun and going all the way through sunset and into the night, with nothing around you but the cliffs, the sea and the music. I think it would be pretty hard to beat.

Q: Could you tell us about your upcoming releases and plans for the year?

There’s a lot happening at the moment. Occidente came out a few months ago on Unreleased Records, and I still see it being supported in so many different places, which is amazing. I also finally released my first track on MINDGAME - a remix of Set Me Free by my friend SIB, released alongside Kashovski. Releasing music on our own label is something I’d honestly overthought for a long time, so it feels really good to have finally done it.

I have more original music on the way and quite a few things currently in discussion. Beyond releases, the goal is simply to keep making music that feels true to where I am creatively, play more shows, travel, and discover new places I haven’t had the chance to play before.

On the MINDGAME side, we’re also entering a really exciting period. We have some great releases coming up and a few bigger projects we’ve been working on for quite some time, so there’s a lot I’m looking forward to, both personally and with the label.

Q: Can you share a fun fact about yourself that most of your listeners are probably unaware of?

One thing I’ve realized doing this interview is that I’m actually terrible at picking favorites. Funny enough, when I’m DJing or making music, I’m usually very instinctive and rarely overthink what track to play or where to take things next. But ask me for my all-time favorite tracks, movies or biggest influences, and suddenly I can spend forever trying to choose.

I guess I’m much better at making decisions in the moment than ranking the things I love. It makes absolutely no sense, but apparently that’s how my brain works.