Maymind has been played on NTS in shows including Emotional Landscapes, featured first on 6 November 2017. Songs played include Dryp Enigma.

Latvian-born, Los Angeles based DJ, producer, and writer.

Born in Riga, Latvia when it was still under Soviet rule, raised in New Orleans and across the Midwest, a feeling of ‘otherness’ has always felt normal to Maymind. Growing up with a stutter imbued him with a curious melancholy about the world, while simultaneously deepening his appreciation for his other senses. That intrigue and deep intentionality is present in the electronic music he makes today, which began twenty years ago with a cracked copy of Sony Acid on a Dell desktop in his parent’s basement in Columbus, Ohio.

A restless musical curiosity led Maymind to move to New York City after college in hopes of expanding his “band” Spanish Prisoners, a solo project that Maymind created in the hopes of collaboration. In mid 2000’s Brooklyn, Maymind made use of Craigslist and solidified the lineup into a four-piece band, and, inspired by sharing stages with local friends like the Antlers and Here We Go Magic, narrowed his musical focus to dreamy, taut psychedelic songs with male and female vocals competing for attention.

Late night shows at Body Actualized Center, 285 Kent, and Glasslands left deep, permanent marks on Maymind’s psyche, and eventually he began to shift his focus to body music. In 2015, after quietly switching modes and swapping his guitar for a sampler, Maymind resurfaced on Adam Marshall’s steely New Kanada label with a three-track EP of Detroit-flavored techno that crammed bright details into its every corner. The title track was praised by a variety of DJs, including Kink and Bedrock’s 3lias for its gnarled, rave-y bass line and skippy drums.

In 2016 a move to Los Angeles signaled another change in approach for Maymind, when a computer crash forced him to limit his gear to a small tabletop hardware setup. The result was Maymind’s first full-length album Illumina (Umor Rex, 2017), which blended flanged, wiry drums with thick ambient pads and malleable synth trills. Illumina quickly sold out and drew praise and radio play from WFMU, the Wire, Red Bull Radio, and more. Boomkat summed it up best: “Bittersweet, downbeat electronica ushered in careful, minimalist style with a pop appeal betraying the artist’s indie pop background”.

Another full-length followed Illumina in 2018, this time on upstart Washington D.C. label Atlantic Rhythms. Cheap Storage, a collection of rainy day electronics and left-field beat inquiries, was recorded in a similar manner to Illumina—live and in an improvisatory mode. The resulting textures are seductive and soulful yet always hypnotic, and place groove and blunted atmospherics on equal footing while simultaneously hearkening back to classic dub techno and 90’s boom bap. Tracks like “Codependent” and “Loneliness and a Kick Drum” show Maymind’s focus on atmosphere, vibe and feeling rather than pure weight or thrust.

Like fellow home recordists Arthur Russell and Brian Eno, Maymind’s music is varied in timbre yet united in its intimacy and warmth. Tracks stretch into the ether, playing with wistful, minimal, coy, deep and fleeting moods. “Maymind does a lot with very little to make gratifying soundscapes that are very easy to sink into,” Pitchfork writer Philip Sherburne noted in his review of Cheap Storage. Further influences from moody post-punk, dub, warped acid, and the UK hardcore continuum all shine through, but what results is greater than those varied pieces: a producer that is confident enough to not cram his compositions with fluff.

Mixes for Witness This, Dublab, Tiny Mix Tapes, and Noods Radio show another side to Maymind–that of a deft selector. Maymind’s tastes as a DJ—whether he is playing a rare Bill Evans cut or a mutated Theo Parrish bootleg—show a willingness to step outside of genre boundaries, while effortlessly sprinkling in his own edits, remixes, and unreleased tracks.