ARTIST NAME:

Mahawam

(Maw-huh-wahm)

UPCOMING RELEASE:

Hot Pressed EP

Q1, 2024

LABEL:

GENRE:

Alternative, Electronic, Indie Rock, Pop

SOUNDS LIKE:

Kele, Frank Ocean, James Blake, Yves Tumor, Tame Impala

ALBUM PREVIEW:

NEWS & PRESS

2024

2020

2019

2017

BIO

Mahawam is the recording and performance outlet for Oakland based musician, songwriter, and producer Malik Mays. The 30 something's work combs the borders and unexplored terrain of self and other, with themes of discovery, reclamation, and purpose. Mahawam’s output speaks to the spirit of curiosity joyously persevering in the margins, specifically that of queer persons in Black America and other previously or currently colonized communities, as it resists forces that challenge the human need for autonomy to decide boundaries and create peace.

“Mahawam allows me to investigate what it means, has meant, and will mean to be me. In that way, Mahawam is how I experience time. It’s my fourth dimension.”

Sobering punchlines, meticulously worded flows, and propellant, genre-defying productions combine to form a sound all their own. Mahawam translates this atmosphere to the stage with understated confidence presenting a raw and immersive experience during their energetic live shows.

As a producer and collaborator, Mahawam employs a left-leaning, pop informed approach, taking remixes and features for acts Emily Afton, NRVS LVRS, The Seshen, and Dominique Gomez into unforeseen territory.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

I make "all wheel drive" music for off-road listeners and do my best to provide them with a very nice truck. If I had to place myself I'd say I'm working in the tradition of the Missy Elliotts, Pharrells, Princes, Dev Hynes, Yves Tumors, Sylvesters, Solanges, Frank Oceans, Andre 3000s, Busdrivers and Kele Okerekes of the world. These artists atomize language, sensation, and image, and reassemble them into rare and, occasionally, new molecules of thought. Furthermore, they possess an uncanny ability to bridge the gap between fear and understanding of these new substances.

The earnestness with which these artists and others like them create and perform is to me like a magician explaining their tricks to the audience. That audience now trusts what they've been otherwise trained to suspect or even persecute, and allows the magician to lead them through uncertain and harrowing waters of unusual theater safely. This ability to captain is something I'm learning to cultivate in my own work.

Hot Pressed EP - About The Record

Hot Pressed isn't a concept record, but the songs are collectively about choice and getting out of your own way. They came about at a time when I was beginning to learn what I want, not just do what I must. There's been talk about queers undergoing a second-adolescence later in life because of the limitations placed around their identities as youths. I feel similarly, but it's more like a kid who grew up too fast learning to be an adult the right way. Parts of this record speak directly to that process of figuring out who you are again after a long period of being certain. Self-definition is hard fought and the idea that you may have to release something you would have died to protect is difficult to reconcile. But age reveals how much of you is you, and the surprise for me around 30 is that the answer was “not much.” At times it feels like I'm living life from one place with my feelings and desires in a box somewhere else. These songs came about as I opened that box, unpacking control of the flow of my life and its capacity for growth. The songs touch on softness during introspection, rejection, the power in choosing yourself, play, and the wisdom in negative emotions. They’re little distillations of my experiences learning to leave instead of cope, to think nothing instead of thinking poorly, and of using peace to rest instead of planning for future conflict.

I generated a couple dozen bits and ideas, which gelled into somewhere around 10 songs. Speckled throughout the process, contributions from guitarist Derek Barber, multi-instrumentalist Natalyn Daniels, and co-producer and mix engineer Aki Ehara did a lot to focus the record's sound, and opened me up to collaboration, which I'd largely avoided previously. I then pared that pool to six tracks that, five of which you hear on the release.

Hot Pressed EP - About The Tracks

#01

Hitherto

Hitherto is a breakup song about leaving yourself. I wanted to paint writhing out of old skins as a soft, euphoric experience. At 31 I'm beginning to feel filled in. I can look down the small mountain of my life at plateaus of defeated smallness, vacillating to obliviously inflated confidence and back, as not simply painful but important steps toward the peace I try to carry with me today. In this way, the song helps to inform my concept of ancestry. We imagine 100’s of kind, loving spirits looking favorably upon us from the ether when we think of ancestors. But if even dead versions of ourselves can be bad and broken, surely some of our great grands were lost and worse too. I feel like it's only recently that my wings have dried enough to be a useful ancestor to a subsequent version of myself, let alone somebody else. In the song I'm speaking to a part of me that maybe just squeaked by, or is taking its final breaths, after an inevitable and volatile wave of self-evaluation. I'm alone in the world but I'm strong, firm. The words came very quickly, all at once. I wanted to start the record with that sentiment and it didn’t feel necessary to dress it up. There's something about it that makes me feel like I was onto something that would spoil if chased. There were a few attempts to build out or polish the idea, but nothing felt as good as the rough, so what you hear on the record is that initial demo.

#02

Did U Kno?

It's the kind of scene that can only happen when nothing is happening. You ask if your partner knows you love them and they roll their eyes and push you off the couch. You walk out of the room wearing pants, re-enter without them, and resume your place on the couch. That kinda thing. It’s not a love song, it’s a song about love. I spend a lot of time making "serious" work, so I wanted to do something lighthearted. I pulled a guitar loop off Splice and sat down for a short while and built a track around it. I knew I didn't want to do "too much," as I often do, having given myself orders to have "fun." When I felt myself getting lost in the weeds I muted a few unnecessary layers and the space that created was immediately refreshing. I tried to keep that in mind when I turned my attention to writing lyrics and melody. I let the track speak, instead of infusing it with whatever nuance of interiority I was fixated on that week. It feels light and youthful, like sharpening a tool I don’t often use to write, and is something I've taken with me into several songs since.

#03

This one is about being ghosted and is sillier than it sounds. It’s about moving beyond the negative emotions the absence of closure creates. Some years back someone gave me their number, we exchanged witty banter for a few days, and then went on a lunch date. Afterward, they ceased all contact, which was awkward because we hung out in the same spots regularly. The song is a bruised ego working through the “whys"and “how comes” of that rejection. They had a strong rocker look, hence the name of the song. I took a brief look into the etymology of the word “hesher” and that led me to the Revolutionary War, German mercenaries, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and lovers of heavy metal. I used all that as connective tissues for my writing. Derek Barber, otherwise known as Perhapsy, played down a few layers of guitars on the track I’d been working on and that gave me the lift I needed to bring the production together and finish the song. Aki Ehara took the reins from there, comping important rhythmic moments with low impacts and adding ear candy before mixing it down.

#04

Hot

Pressed

I like to think of this one as the bag lady telling Erykah Badu to mind her business. It pushes back against the judgment those who have lived largely trauma-free lives levy upon people who have been through it. The song is like "I'd rather not be this way but I don't have the luxury, and a person like you wouldn't understand. Go pat yourself on the back somewhere else." Anger is ugly and exhausting but it's a tangible and effective motivator in ways "good vibes" and positive thinking could never be. It's dangerous but it's honest and it's simple. "Hot Pressed" wants pacifists who aren't in tune with their rage to ask themselves if distance from it is peace or a blind spot.

It took me a long time to finish writing this song because I wanted to handle the subject matter with care. After months swapping out single words while waiting for a download from the stars I drove to the Pilsner Inn in the San Francisco and told myself I couldn’t leave the patio until it was done. I don’t know why that worked, but it did. With the lyrics finished I took the production to my friends to round out. Derek Barber laid down additional guitar and texture tracks, Aki Ehara carved the mix over a few passes, and a few arrangement tweaks later we were done.

#05

Lizard Brain

This one started with a drum loop I made beat-boxing into Koala on my phone. Once in Ableton I had a happy accident moving MIDI and created a ragtime-y riff you can hear during the choruses. I thought “Okay, something interesting and whimsical is happening here, let’s lean into this.” I pushed stems to Aki and he added a few layers of percussion, synth and ear candy that turned out to be exactly what the track needed. I only had the chorus lyrics worked out at the time. The verses were a slog because I didn’t know what I wanted to say yet. I ended up developing this loose “I’m my own boyfriend and he’s not prepared for life, let alone me” narrative as a bumper. This turned into the story of someone with important work chasing their muse, wishing their suitors well while spurning all advances in the same breath. It's a reminder to myself to keep my eye on the prize, and asks others to leave me be while I do so.