AP Track Review
Once you see the Official Video of Death Row by MXMS you will likely not forget it and if you are into the macabre or, if you are one to slow down for more than safety reason while passing a traffic accident, you might even find yourself having to go back so see what the hell that was what you saw but didn't comprehend fully. The 70's Horror motifed title portend things to come (or at least you think so). Ariel Levitan looking like a stylized socialite Stepford wife is robotically comely adoring odd creations and horror tropes. The look is shiny and decadent. As she lip syncs she acts stoically soulless. It is like a hip hop video taken over by the likes of Dario Argento's giallo style of horror meets Roger Vadim meets 70's British Hammer Horror flicks. The other half of MXMS (aka Me and My Shadow), Jeremy Dawson appears too like the other half of Ariel's deadly cold persona. He is the spoiled and petulant one, the erratic one in the horror movie who goes rogue and fucks everything up.
This is a wildly odd video and something you might and, like me, watch several times. Of course, it helps that the song has a decidedly cool vibe like a psycho Britney Spears pop twisted into something much, much darker with murder pop stances, the cinematic ambiance of helicopters and police cars, stabbing hip hop / rap synths and Ariel's commanding vox. It is not all that easy to describe but horror pop, industrial punk and hip hop come to mind, not singularly but they come to mind. Ariel and Jeremy have made it easy to discern or describe because they call their sound funeral pop and it is a well coined name, if you ask me. The two met in the San Fernando Valley at the tail end of 2013 after Ariel had just relocated from New York to L.A. Their short writing sessions became more and, as they say, the rest is history. Their aesthetic is to push "love, death, pain and fear into their art" does relate the how fucked up things are in the world. I have yet to fully dive into the MXMS pool but I definitely will. I am not afraid of a little blood.
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Robb Donker
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process (you) do not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
War torn from past and present battles of mental illness and addiction, the monsters are very real and the abyss is a current state of reality for MXMS, short for “Me and My Shadow." Comprised of singer Ariel Levitan and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Dawson, the self-produced duo from New York City and small town Oklahoma creates their own musical genre “Funeral Pop” fusing classic melodic songwriting with dark unfiltered chaos driven by a thousand forms of fear.
Previous singles from Me and My Shadow focused on the minimalism of a raw piano and voice; drawing from Jeremy's classical piano background complimenting Ariel's heart piercing tenor vocals. The new recordings reflect their sonic progression to an expansive pallet of dark instrumentation, pulsing analog synthesizers and a crushing rhythm section layered around Ariel’s haunting delivery. Focusing on movements of emotional trauma and taboo metaphoric expression, the brutal honesty of MXMS leaves an open invitation for listeners' own stories rise to the surface.
The band is now gearing up to release their EP, Funeral Pop I, on May 1st, 2019, which features the brand new single “Salvation Hurts.”
“'Salvation Hurts' is written about how extraordinarily painful the process is to be free from ___________.” — Jeremy & Ariel
The EP also includes previous singles “Paris,” “After Night,” and “Gravedigger,” which garnered attention from Suicide Sheep, Earmilk, KCRW, and Spotify editorial playlists including Chill Vibes, Alternative Beats, Sludge, Just Chill, Fresh Finds, and Indie Darlings as well as the Topsify's Indie Mixtape playlist. “Paris” also hit #1 on Hype Machine the first week of release, and MXMS has received press from the likes of Consequence of Sound, NestHQ, Rolling Stone, Fader and many others.
MXMS is currently on tour with She Wants Revenge, with more tour dates TBA for summer 2019. The duo interprets their recordings live using sequences of projection, keyboards, guitars, and drums creating a safe space for Ariel to deliver her message for the hopeful and the hopeless alike.
"MXMS's music frequently swells from lush yet painfully intimate lows to rousing and inspirational cinematic highs, demanding to be mined for a transformative film montage. The duo relishes straddling the fine line between light and dark --as well as navigating, and often deliberately disrupting, the fault line between their fierce desires to both shun industry norms, and to share their music with the world." -Kurt McVey for Interview Magazine
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