MLF On Love, Timing, and Letting Go Inside ‘Temporary People for Timeless Changes’
- Undrtone Blog
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
MLF has spent the last few years quietly building one of the most assured voices in the French electronic landscape. From early releases like 66BEO through to refined statements on Permanent Vacation, House of Love, and Kidding Aside, her sound has grown with intention rather than urgency. Touring alongside Folamour, stepping onto stages at DGTL, Blitz, and Hangar, and playing rooms like Rex Club and La Clairière, she has moved naturally into international spaces without losing her sense of self.
Her debut album, Temporary People for Timeless Changes, marks a different kind of arrival. Not louder. Not bigger. Just closer.
At its core sits a question that shaped both the record and her recent life. “Can you meet the right person at the wrong time?” For MLF, that question emerged from lived experience rather than concept. “It was kind of the first time in my life that I’d met someone I wanted so badly for it to work with,” she says. “I had the feeling we were meant to be.” The realisation that followed was painful but formative. “Sometimes love is not enough. You can love someone deeply but still let them go, or they don’t choose you.”
That sense of emotional exposure runs through the album. “The part where I’m not fully chosen,” she explains, is what she left inside these tracks. Letting go of old narratives became part of the process. “Leaving behind the idea that love must be hard or something you have to fight for.” There is relief in that honesty, even humour. “Hopefully, the next releases are going to be more club-oriented and happier vibes,” she laughs.
Musically, the album draws from a deep well. Long before electronic music, MLF grew up playing jazz piano and rock guitar. Those foundations remain present, even when they are not obvious. “You can feel the jazz influence in ‘Are You Happy Now?’” she says. “I added a lot of elements from jazz, and I was a huge fan of St Germain.” That early training shaped her instincts. “It helped me a lot with chord progressions and solos. Even if it’s not always perceptible, it is everywhere in the arrangement.”
Her love for 90s electronic music also surfaces clearly. “Songs like ‘You Run’ or the intro ‘You Never Know’ are more Balearic,” she explains. “I am a huge fan of piano house from that era.” That period still feels vital to her. “The 90s were a time of full development and amazing vibes.”
Making an album, however, was less about format and more about emotional headspace. “I was kind of sad, nostalgic, even angry, which were not emotions I was used to feeling,” she admits. The process became expansive. “I made around one hundred tracks. They were not all supposed to mean anything. I just needed to get them out.” Genres blurred freely. “There was italo disco, electro, even RNB vibes.”
As the record took shape, something shifted. “Some of the track titles seemed to respond to each other,” she says. “Intense in the beginning and slowly drifting away.” The closing track, ‘Notes to Myself’, brings that arc inward. “I hope people can still feel the coherence,” she adds, despite the changing moods and tempos.
Beyond the music, MLF chose to open the project outward. Through interviews and conversations with strangers, she invited others to answer the same question that shaped the album. “I wanted to know if it was only me going through these feelings,” she says. “There is no wrong or right answer.” Hearing different perspectives became part of the work itself.
The process also reshaped her personal boundaries. “My vision of things that were not fully aligned with me has changed,” she reflects. “Choosing better who can enter your life, and accepting that sometimes people will leave.”
When listeners reach the end of Temporary People for Timeless Changes, they meet someone mid-transition. “Someone who has not fully accepted this new version of themselves yet,” she says. But also someone who is still moving forward. “Someone who still wants to keep dancing, experience life, and believes that love can still be right around the corner.”
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