Manda Rin gets fruity
By John Earls - "It's been a while since my last record, but I've still put out three albums with my band and a solo one by 31. Not bad, eh?"
Indeed not, especially since Manda Rin's sleek disco solo debut My DNA will surprise most who tried to pigeonhole her old band Bis as lo-fi.
"I started by quietly putting songs on MySpace," says Manda. "Everyone's been amazingly enthusiastic ever since."
Rather wonderfully, Manda has been too busy running her badge-making firm Wee Badgers to make an album before.
"Badges were rubbish when I was in Bis, so I started making ours," she recalls.
"Friends began asking me to do ones for them, and it's grown from there. I do badges for Editors, Mogwai, The Duke Spirit... Some of the bands know my past, but I don't like to boast about time I've had in the spotlight myself."
Manda insists My DNA isn't too far removed from the final days of Bis.
"One of the reasons Bis split is because nobody would give us a fair hearing," says Manda, real name Amanda MacKinnon.
"We'd progressed a lot, but people still automatically wrote 'lo-fi pop band.' The album continues the synth stuff we wrote by the end - hopefully I'll get a fair trial now!"
Manda often DJs around her native Glasgow, but sees that as completely separate from her own music.
"My DNA is quite dancey, but that's not down to my DJing," she explains. "I'm not a proper dance DJ at all, I just play records one after the other and hope the sequencing works.
"And it's often not dance songs I play - the perfect DJ set-opener for me is Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."
Manda is relieved to have recently finished her first solo tour.
"In Bis, I'd hide behind my keyboard to one side of the stage," she admits. "As a solo musician, you have to take control, about every last detail both on and off stage. I quickly loved it.
"Except London, where the posters read 'Miranda Rin, formerly of The Bis.' Now, that's a cheeky humour. The guy who did it could have showed his face."
One song on the album is called Guilty Pleasures. What are Manda's?
"Collecting menus," she giggles. "If a new restaurant opens, I have to get the menu, even if it's a take-away leaflet. The bottom drawer in my kitchen is full of them. That's quite weird, isn't it?"
What about the title track of DNA? "It's the one everyone seems to love. Some of my friends couldn't believe it was me, they loved it that much!"