Now Hear This
Written throughout 2019 and early 2020, recorded at Milosh’s home studio, United Recording Studios and Revival at The Complex, and mixed by Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, Interpol, My Bloody Valentine). Home is familiar in its synthesis of propulsive beats, orchestral flourishes, piano ruminations and sultry, gender-nonconforming vocals, but never have they sounded more cohesive or alive. Home is bookended by celestial cantos sung by the Danish National Girls’ Choir, who Rhye performed with at a landmark concert in Denmark in 2017.
The new album finds Johny Fisher and Aaron Martin expanding their swinging rock music to encapsulate cosmic orchestral pop, squishy funk, swelling folk rock, and everything in between-shattering any boundaries they'd previously set for themselves. Once Upon One Time is the latest evolution in a creative partnership that dates back to 2016, when Fisher-who'd previously been in a carousel of bands with Martin-grew tired of work as a hired-gun touring musician and made the latter an artistic offer he couldn't refuse: "I went back to Aaron and said, 'Please, start a band with me, I'm dying to,'" he recalls with a laugh. Since then, the duo's released two full-lengths-2017's Love You, Mean It and last year's Tell All Your Friend-that attracted an increasingly rabid fan base and eventually caused the group to be a regular touring act as well. "Okey Dokey has never just been Johny, Jeremy, and I," Martin states. "It takes far more than the three of us to make our records-it takes our family and friends, our team, our video directors, photographers, press agents, our beautiful audience, and our love. We're done just being a band. We're a community now."
mxmtoon, the Oakland-raised, Brooklyn-based artist known as Maia, is back with dusk: the second of two thematically interconnected EPs. If dawn from earlier this year drew from the gentle optimism and hope found in gorgeous sunrise, dusk is a beautiful exploration of the other side of the emotional duality that is the human experience.
dawn & dusk together are at once recalling of mxmtoon’s earlier work while also expanding her sonic horizons more than ever before, an exciting new direction suggesting that the sky is the truly the limit for Maia’s artistry.