mxmtoon shares details of new LP liminal space

mxmtoon photo credit: Bảo Ngô

mxmtoon has announced her new album, liminal space, will drop on November 1st via AWAL. mxmtoon shares. “In the turmoil of the last two years since my second record, I’ve felt suspended in a transitory landscape that often at times felt endless. It’s easy to feel trapped in something you barely understand, and life has thrown an onslaught of questions towards me that I can only respond with, ‘I have no idea how to answer this.’ So, suspended in the unknown I wrote these songs. I tried to unravel how I’ve chosen to fulfill the roles I’ve been given in my own life, and at times how I’ve failed to keep up with them.

liminal space was also a chance for mxmtoon to work exclusively with an all-female team of producers, writers, engineers, and even in the wider creative visual process working with female photographers and designers including visual artist KangHee Kim For mxmtoon, having an all-female creative team made the process of reckoning with these decisions much more impactful. “‘liminal space’ is an album for people struggling to understand agency, who bathe in the bittersweet and lose themselves wandering in their own endless hallway with no ending.”

mxmtoon is also gifting fans with another new song “the situation” which features vocals from Sarah Bonito of the UK indie-pop trio Kero Kero Bonito and cryalot. A reflective, existential track masqueraded as an upbeat pop anthem, the song is a clever commentary on feeling like you’re past your prime.

“What is there to say… we get older, then we die, and there’s nothing you can do about it! A lot of the songs on this record deal directly with the concept of girlhood and the cycle of life. I was twenty-three when I wrote “the situation” and I feel like I grew up with this idea that my early twenties were gonna be the time of my life where I’m the hottest and most fun I’ll ever be,” reveals mxmtoon. “Society as a whole really pushes the narrative that women reach a peak and then slide down for the rest of their lives… and that’s just stupid. I always love to use some sarcasm in the mix when I’m writing songs that tend to be pretty emotionally raw though, and ‘the situation’ was the perfect opportunity to make fun of how dumb that is. Getting to work with Kero Kero Bonito on this song in particular was such a dream come true too. I’ve been listening to KKB since 2013, and Sarah’s vocals have been stuck in my head since Intro Bonito. Her contribution to the song was so perfect and fun, it really glosses up the song to be externally peppy when the whole thing is about dying! She’s amazing.”

“Inspired by the theme of death and the inevitability of it in this song, I remembered a quote I once heard: ‘Life is like a roller coaster; it’s your choice to either scream or enjoy the ride.’ This led me to write lyrics based on that idea,” adds Sarah Bonito.