A Quick Chat With Majeska About “hello, from dreamland”
Q: Hi! “hello, from dreamland” feels like a big departure from your debut—was there a moment you knew you were ready to make a dance record?
A: It was simple: because I wanted to dance! The first song on the album, “LOOK AROUND!” came to me and its producers Grant Thompson and Carter Davis full of dance-able hopeful energy. I knew that the record from then on was going to live in that world.
Q: You described the new album as “opening the locked journal of your early Y2K childhood”. What’s something you rediscovered from that time that made it onto the album?
A: Throughout the creation of this album I watched old VHS family videos, opened a ton of old diaries, and called my mom a lot. Nostalgia has always been important to my art, but this time around I searched for my childlike imagination and channeled it. As a kid, nothing was too abstract—I talked to trees and found messages in the sky. It became how I practiced living while making this album, and now every day since.
Q: There’s a lot of talk about your visuals being hyper-real and dreamy. What do you picture when you hear your own music?
A: I lose myself in whatever world I write about. If I write about a person, I go to them. If I write about a place, I go there. Time travel is real as soon as you close your eyes. And everything is always more colorful and dreamier when I travel that way.
Q: Between the debut and this new chapter, you collaborated with artists like Stringer and loyalties. How did those experiences shape your creative direction?
A: Always and forever my collaborations with friends make me a better artist. Stringer is an absolute powerhouse. I can’t say enough about how talented he is in words, please just go listen. Our collab for “Mr. Hollywood” was a song where I placed myself into someone else’s world instead of my own and sang from there. Terrifying at first, but with friends next to you like that—it’s no time before you’re flying.
Q: You’ve spent time in both Nashville and Sydney—how have those cities left their fingerprints on your sound?
A: In ways I’m still understanding. Australia as a whole has a musical energy unique to anywhere else in the world. Almost every time I hear something that catches my ear as strikingly different, it’s coming from over there. Every show and every artist I met had their own rules. No one seemed to try the same path. Coming to Nashville, and making electronic music in a formerly country/writers round dominated space, I constantly channel the “make my own rules” mentality too.
Q: Songs like “Come Back to Me” and “LOOK AROUND!” are landing next to major EDM names. Do you feel more pressure or freedom in that space?
A: I feel free as can be here. Let’s dance.
Q: How did it feel to have your own production credits for the first time on this record? Did it change your relationship with the songs?
A: Well they’re very personal relationships, these songs. No one was there for the creation except the song and I. Releasing them was at first terrifying—it honestly felt as if I had a secret lover that I one day just decided to hard launch all over the internet and beyond.
Q: You’ve played everywhere from Brooklyn Bowl to Musician’s Corner—do you have a favorite live show moment that still lingers?
A: I love playing Nashville. It’s home! But my favorite show of all time was Toronto a few years ago. I sold out my first show ever there and the room was absolutely silent during the show. Everyone was listening. I felt so safe with my new friends that night that I played songs I’ve never played again in another room other than my own.
Q: Your music has been described as “a love letter” to fans of artists like MUNA and M83. What do you hope your listeners carry with them after hearing this album?
A: This album is about the absolute, total, fearless freedom to imagine your own world within the one we share. Close your eyes and travel to hug that person one more time. Reach for the leaves and for the hands of those you love. Find answers within yourself, and the rest in the clouds. Don’t take life too seriously—blur the line of what’s real and what’s imagined until it doesn’t even exist.
