Maiya Blaney – A Room With A Door That Closes
New York City-based producer, songwriter, and vocalist Maiya Blaney announces her new album A Room With A Door That Closes due June 13th via Lex Records.
The forthcoming album will include the previously shared tracks “Honey I” and “Fumbled,” along with the brand new single “Recognize Me,” which arrives today paired with an otherworldly and nostalgic video directed by Flatspot. The anthemic “Recognize Me” was produced by Blaney and Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Snail Mail).
Speaking about the new song and the accompanying video, Blaney reflects, “‘Recognize Me’ is the bedroom hairbrush anthem my 16-year-old self needed more than anything. I felt it in the moment the song came out of me, cause that’s who it felt like was talking. Was very reactive in that moment and pubescent, and allowing myself to be. Allowing myself to expel myself not just from my situation, but from myself, in order to make room for the new.
The video leans into this. I am in 3 different physical states — my bedroom, my planet, my galaxy. All bring a sense of grounded peace to me. All are the same place. In it is the comfort and catharsis I feel within the walls of my own world. A room with a door that closes.”
Blaney describes A Room With A Door That Closes as “a love letter to her blue,” an emotional state that she defines as “a kinetic, intense, and dark energy that needs to be expressed as soon as it is felt.” The eleven songs on the album span radioactive kiss offs, sorrowful meditations on yearning, and gossamer reveries about self image. The music has a fittingly tumultuous, intricate sound: 1960s soul samples melt into warm drum n bass percussion, blips of glitch ping pong against grating synth, and Blaney’s vocals range from searing punk exclamations to gentle, exploratory croons. It’s the sound of a singer peering deeply within herself and presenting the world with everything she finds, unadulterated, in real time.
Blaney self-produced the new project along with a tight team of three producers: Emerson Fossett, Harlan Steed (Show Me The Body), and Alex Farrar. Blaney had just started playing guitar and producing around the time she began writing the songs that would become the album. Being new to both producing and guitar playing opened up a sense of exploration and freedom for her. She felt emboldened to employ more adventurous riffs and unconventional song arrangements when she was writing.
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