AMBNT MNDLN (pronounced Ambient Mandolin, but you knew that) is Ira and Toni. Ira plays a haunted electric mandolin that was gifted by his estranged grandmother. Ira and Toni are old friends from playwrights school. They started the band shortly after the pandemic when Ira blew his Covid stimulus on a fancy drum machine and quickly learned that operating it was above his abilities. So he called up Toni, a drummer who loves synthesis. The duo started jamming in Ira’s home studio in Bushwick making experimental Boards Of Canada-indebted atmospheric freak outs like 2024’s Viewpoints.

The duo’s first shows were entirely improvised. The first was at Purgatory in Brooklyn.  After their set, the band found Congressperson AOC on the dance floor. She was there to see Quartz Casino Band and totally missed AMBNT MNDLN’s set, but Ira and Toni took it as a good omen and kept going. In 2025, Toni took a gig as drummer for Sunbeam Colleen, which gave AMBNT MNDLN the idea to switch up to real drums. The band convened at Red Note Studios- the Twin Peaks-themed rehearsal space on the Bushwick/Ridgewood border to try out a new sound.

Around this time, producer John Epperly invited AMBNT MNDLN to record for a day at Metropolitan Sound. This offer gave Ira and Toni the inspiration to finish writing their first set of real songs. AMBNT MNDLN’s debut studio album Electron Octave is partially named after the Elektron drum machine that set the band into motion, and features nine Dream Pop-indebted, folk-inflected, Shoegaze-adjacent songs about self doubt, streaming era bureaucracy, miscommunication, grief and loss, finding self esteem, and fear of flying. Electron Octave will be self released in Fall 2026.

In May of 2025, Ira was cast in a David Byrne music video. By some stroke of luck, the wardrobe department picked Ira’s red AMBNT MNDLN jumpsuit as his costume for the shoot and then sat David Byrne down directly behind him… wherein Ira took a photo over his shoulder, which became the album cover image of Electron Octave.  The signature red jumpsuit is an ode to David Byrne, Devo, and Kraftwerk- musicians who embraced futurism, innovation, and theatricality. A drunk guy on the Lower East Side said the band looks like Ghostbusters, also a totally valid read!