Rock Band MAE Returns To Houston After Hiatus, And They’ve Brought A New Album
Houston, Texas: Rock band MAE is back from hiatus. The band had parted ways during the last decade, as some members started families, and others pursued personal projects, never really leaving the music scene. They rocked The Studio at Warehouse Live in Houston this week.
They do an amazing live show, performing songs they have released throughout the years and unveiling tracks from their upcoming self-titled album, “Multi-sensory Aesthetic Experience” set to be released November 30th. MAE dropped an EP titled “3.0” as a teaser of what is to come on their upcoming album. “3.0” is available now on all streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, and more.
MAE’s Houston show is one of a few other tour stops that will conclude MAE’s touring for 2018. The band hit the road this fall in support of their upcoming album. They will be touring well after that too, touching international stops in Brazil and Japan. While they aim to promote their album, lead singer and songwriter Dave Elkins spoke with us about the much larger picture and goal of bringing people together utilizing music.
Pushing The Boundaries Of The Music Listening Experience
What is profound about this band is how they are using innovations in technology to push the envelope of how we experience music. The vision for this album cycle was born when MAE played at the Forbes 30 Under 30 EMEA Summit in the Tower of David in Jerusalem in 2016. They concluded the evening with the first ever largescale live musical performance, synced to virtual reality. Dave Elkins stated,
“We performed in front of 650/700 people who all took their smartphones, put them in these cardboard viewfinders and all the visuals that they were seeing were in virtual reality 360 [which] were accommodating the music that we had written and recorded just to accommodate this experience.”
The innovation does not end there. The band wanted to create art for the whole body, connecting the fields of virtual reality, music, engineering, neuroscience, haptics, and animation, making it the first of its kind. The band collaborated with artist/animator David Lobser, violinist Tim Fain (12 Years A Slave, Black Swan), and neuroscientist David Eagleman to create an experience they call, “LIGHT”. “LIGHT” is a project involving a vest created by Eagleman that is embedded with disks that vibrate in-synch with the music, composed by MAE and Fain. The experience comes with a full 360 virtual reality headset containing visuals of varying patterns of flashing light and colors, making a very relaxing, immersive kaleidoscope. MAE brought their multi-sensory aesthetic experience right to the United Nations General Assembly. They brought the “LIGHT” performance to the 72nd UN General Assembly where they set up in the foyer and did one-on-one’s with people who afterwards described their experience. Dave Elkins on performing at the UN:
We brought it to the UN to connect people…Well its interesting there’s an astronaut that we’re friends with and he told us after experiencing “LIGHT” that it took him back to the awe and wonder that he first felt when he was in outer space for the first time. So, if you get an experience from an astronaut that says something like that, I mean, it seems like we hit some marks pretty well off.”
All of this, Elkins, explains is done with the aim to unify people using music. Elkins explains in our interview how he sees music has become a means to tear down all of the boundaries that would otherwise separate us such as language and culture.The band will be showcasing “LIGHT” on their scheduled “Mae Days”. More Mae Days will be announced but until then, if fans want of taste of what they working on, they can get some of MAE’s VR content on their website. Be on the look out for their self-titled album November 30th and expect more innovations from this forward-thinking group.
MAE is Dave Elkins, Zach Gehring, and Jacob Marshall.
For more information and to keep up with MAE:
https://www.instagram.com/whatismae/