Maehem99 is a Gucci model from heaven, twirling a silver pole in the VIP clubs of London. In their debut EP Sexual Commerce Mae sings of their fall from the high fashion stage into an “insidious” spiral towards the nightlife beneath. In a set of five club cuts, they recount scenes on the runways, back stages, and dark basements of the image-based industry, praying for their heart whilst selling an identity.
When I first spoke with Mae, their gentleness was almost a surprise amidst the image they lead with. They answered each question with a hand over their heart, their eyes open wide like two crystal mirrors. We talked their upcoming EP, queerness in the “image-based industry”, and the story behind Sexual Commerce’s second track, “Burn Your Wishes”, which dropped May 28. The song dives sharp into the EP’s themes surrounding intrapersonal hope and interpersonal intimacy.
“When I make a song, it has to come from a place of deep feeling, first of all. The lyrics are important to me, because I used to write poems when I was younger. It often comes from a really deep place of pain, and then it comes out of me quickly, almost like it’s not coming from me,” they say.
In “Sexual Commerce” Maehem’s vocals oscillate between sticky-sweet and resonant to deep, and blunt, like a body pressed close to a heavy speaker, the filthy baseline carries in darker tracks like “I Can’t Be Your Guy”. The EP’s introduction has already drawn back curtains on an atmosphere that is as delicious and sacred as it is terrifying. In its visualiser, Mae dons an “I <3 MY WIFE” t-shirt and dances in the same club they used to work in. Their creative direction, led by Emily Bennett is a stylised mixture of “exhaustion, desperation, sleep deprivation, personified into glamorous images that are also disturbing.”
“I see the way women and people born women are treated in this industry. The visuals for sexual commerce are reflections of the image-based industry.” Likewise, the music explores what is said behind the lights and cameras.
“We are trying to express a physical manifestation of the pain, wonder, surrealism and horror thrust upon young people in the industry. In this image-based world the body is everything, and yet, it often feels like a monster, or like it’s been injured or moulded or starved again and again. The visuals and story that I am trying to create now would be too weird for a lot of the fashion industry, but feels right at home in music.
After appearing on BBC Introducing, they supported sex-techno artist Yasmina Gasolina at Halal Fiesta in Madrid, their biggest show yet, a festival for queer Muslims and ex-Muslims – particularly resonant for Mae, who grew up Muslim before walking away from their religious roots and moving to London. Once in the city, they walked to 36 different modeling agencies, finally getting signed by the 37th. The fast life quickly took over their world; the throughline of each track is the non-stop movement imbued.
The final track “Like a Dove” is a wax-coated dream or prayer, its distorted baselines married with seraphic high notes, nostalgic of artists such as FKA Twigs, Arca, or Teather. Reverb, echoing beats give the listening sensation that you are inside the room with Maehem. There, they strut the balance between hard and soft, disembodied and emotional, building a sonic world for the raw, the bloody, the real.
“When I wrote ‘Burn Your Wishes’ I was traveling with someone I had a strange and unique connection with. We were in Taiwan, and we had been fighting and fighting the whole trip. We tried to make up and stop fighting on the Lions Gate portal, the night you are supposed to write and burn up your wishes. We went outside, and mine burnt well, but hers won’t catch fire. I tried to help her, but then, I knocked her wishes into the sewer.”
A small flame to guide the glide into the EP’s fantastic darkness, “Burn Your Wishes” dropped May 28th.