Ming Ming

John Mingsley, an experimental electronic musician, first captured sounds as Ming Ming during his teenage years by transforming cello works from his junior-high orchestra into electronic compositions on a home computer. In 2007 he relocated from Virginia to Boston, Massachusetts, enrolling at Berklee College of Music. His interests soon gravitated toward film, prompting a transfer to the Massachusetts College of Art, yet he maintained his recording practice by adapting newly acquired film-editing methods to slice and rearrange reel-to-reel tapes of his own music. Throughout this phase he began producing abstract pieces built around drum machines, synthesizers, and analog techniques. Ming Ming’s debut live appearance came at Boston’s Weirdstock festival in 2009, after which a demo reached staff at Waaga Records, a Lefse imprint. In 2011 Lefse issued the artist’s first full-length release, Ultrameta OK.