MXMS, short for "me and my shadow", is the multimedia project of singer Ariel Levitan and pianist Jeremy Dawson. Harbored feelings and trauma each had hidden away for a lifetime floated to the surface in Jeremy's studio they lovingly refer to as "the grave"…. Each story, each moment in their lives they recorded into a lyric, a song, into a vision. Starting with the song"omg", their dual documented story of a violent, toxic life was born.
Describing their music as a combination of "Funeral Pop" and "Dead Western", MXMS made a vow to express their art as naked as it reads channeling artists like Johnny Cash, Nirvana, Serge Gainsbourg, Lush, Vast, and Enya.
Collaborating with designer Asher Levine for a "funeral" inspired fashion show for SS 2014, performing a series of shows at NYC's immersive Sleep No More theatre, and playing LACMA's (Los Angeles contemporary museum of modern art's) annual Halloween Ball installation called "Haunted Screens" German 1920's Cinema
are just a few of the many events and performances MXMS has taken part of in efforts to jointly focus on music, fashion and cinema.
At the end of 2014, with a large collection of songs and a finished film script MXMS signed with boutique indie label Grand Jury Records. The music is earmarked for release early summer internationally via digital and vinyl with an accompanying tour.
"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
