Mxmtoon Uploads Live Somber Music To SoCal

mxmtoon plays Moroccan Lounge Jan. 25; press photo

mxmtoon plays Moroccon Lounge Jan. 25; press photo

Young internet music sensation mxmtoon is to play her music live at the Moroccon Lounge in Los Angeles Jan. 25. The show marks the first time that the inspiring up and coming artist will play a headlining concert which sold out nine weeks in advance.

This isn’t the first time that mxmtoon, the musical handle of the 18-year-old Maia, has played at the venue. She played there last August in a smaller capacity, describing it as “a surreal experience” but one which she is looking forward to doing again on a much bigger scale.

“I’m just super excited to go back to that same venue and to see some returning faces and to meet some new people and just connect with them on a more familiar level I think other than just being on the internet all the time,” Maia said.

Hailing from Oakland, Maia’s one of many musicians who have taken advantage of the internet. Her somber, ukulele-backed sonnets, a sweet voice along with her creative uniqueness have helped earned her over 400K cumulative streams on services like Spotify.

mxmtoon; press photo

mxmtoon; press photo

One might wonder what kind of genre her music belongs to, but even Maia doesn’t honestly know.
“I feel like genre is something that I still struggle with a little bit,” Maia admitted. “I would say, without trying to put it into a genre, I feel like my music is pretty much like diary entries in a song writing format.”

In fact, Maia’s song writing process is coincidentally dependent on her using a diary as a foundation for her song creation.

“The song writing process I feel is pretty simple,” Maia mused. “I keep a journal of different things that go on in my head and then, you know, I’ll figure out a melody which sometimes pops into my head as well, open up RhymeZone and then put together some lyrics and see what works.”

Maia’s most recent EP, plum blossom, is a terrific example of both her creativity and amazing capacity to tell stories.

“plum blossom is just kind of a culmination of my experiences in the last year and the transition period of kind of graduating from high school and then trying to figure out, you know, what does life look like beyond that educational experience,” Maia said.

“The songs are just kind of derived from different people and things that I’ve experienced so far, and I’d like to think that the project is kind of emblematic of my growth and resilience in what’s happened to me over the past time period.”

Maia owes the creation of the songs from plum blossom and her love of music in general to her mother.

mxmtoon; photo Kenneth Munoz

mxmtoon; photo Kenneth Munoz

“I started playing violin when I was six,” Maia recalls. “My mom made me sign up for lessons and then I eventually phased out of that and cycled through a lot of other instruments. I did a lot of orchestral stuff with trumpet and cello and eventually had to pick up the guitar and ukulele in my music class in middle school.”

She thanks these classes for helping her choose the ukulele as her musical instrument of choice.

“I liked it so much that my parents got me one for Christmas and I started playing it on my own time and learning through YouTube tutorials and just self-taught myself basically.”

From the age of 13 onwards, Maia’s ukulele and creativity have aided her in the writing and composition of her own music. She finally started publishing her music online last year using the handle of mxmtoon, a name she owes largely to her father.

“mxmtoon was what I used on Instagram when I was posting my drawings because MXM are my initials and my dad thought it would be a creative idea to add toon to the end as it stood for cartoon,” Maia revealed. “It was a unique name that nobody had taken on any other site so I ended up using it for everything like Soundcloud. It’s stuck with me until now.”

Though Maia’s already acquired quite the following and acclaim at a young age, the opportunity to branch out into the live music scene, she admits is humbling and inspires her toward seeking self-improvement.

“I’m still learning how to sing” Maia admits with a laugh. “I just started doing vocal lessons.”

The upcoming headlining appearance at the Moroccon Lounge isn’t a one shot. Maia says she plans to go beyond making music exclusively in her bedroom as she did during the early part of her career and wants to share it live.

“We have a tour coming up in March and so we’re going to play at some new cities and some returning cities, which is super exciting, and hopefully we can roll out some new music and I can meet some more people face-to-face.”