Deth Rali Shows Us His 'Light Levels'
Deth Rali Shows Us His 'Light Levels'
Jay Maike's debut album is out now on Moon Magnet
Deth Rali will be playing the Balanced Breakfast SXSW Virtual Music Showcase tonight, March 19. You can find more info here.
Deth Rali’s debut, Light Levels, is the result of an artist experiencing the pandemic.
After playing in various bands over the last decade, Denver-based musician Jay Maike has donned the Deth Rali moniker as a vehicle to release his solo work. The seven-track EP is a deeply personal journey for Maike, who has layered in a wall of synths, samples, and drum machines while often burying his vocals in the mix under blankets of reverb.
When I came across it last month, I was immediately drawn to all of the directions that Light Levels pulled the listener. For the project, Maike was influenced by M83, St. Vincent, Pond, of Montreal, and Tame Impala, which fans of their first two albums InnerSpeaker and Lonerism will be intrigued.
Going for “big soundscapes and big feelings,” the record sounds like something from George Clanton’s 100% Electronica chillwave label, a dreamy kaleidoscope of futuristic sounds that also give the listener a sense of euphonious nostalgia.
After noticing that Maike had also spent time in Sour Boy, Bitter Girl, a band originally from my hometown, and some of the members I grew up with, I knew I had to reach out to Maike and find out the story behind Deth Rali.
Light Levels is quite the departure from where Maike began his music career.
Starting with more straightforward indie rock interests, Maike formed King Eddie in Detroit back in 2013. Growing up listening to his dad’s collection of Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Ramones, The Cure, and Cocteau Twins, Maike primarily wrote songs on guitar.
The band would go through different eras and members, including their singer, Maike’s former partner, and their daughter’s mother. After their separation, he found himself working on new songs, but this time alone.
“I was unsure when I was writing this album whether it was going to be the next King Eddie chapter or something new,” says Maike. “I started to realize that I no longer felt a connection to the spirit of the project, and I was primarily making music on my own now.”
Another thing that changed his musical path is Maike’s day job working as a music instructor at Colorado College. While teaching songwriting, production, and experimental music, his desire to create digitally driven songs increased. “I think it's changed me because I started to use the tools that my job requires and also from having to teach students about synthesizers, which just inevitably got me more into making them in my own music.”
Collaborating with other artists from Moon Magnet, the Denver-based collective, recording space, and label, Maike channeled his personal life's challenges into the album. “Light Levels was a collection of songs that carried me through this time of transformation in my own life. I was a single dad, started this crazy new role in music technology at Colorado College, and just came into my own as a human.”
The challenge is present on songs like “Wreckingball” as Maike sings the chorus of “doin’ it on the tight rope, I’m learning” over a fat bassline and into the bridge break of “changes pile up, where did my life go?”.
After the ambient track “The Phantom Laureate,” the record opens up into the splendors of “Spirit/Envy.” Over a wave of delicious E-bow feedback and sequenced segments, Maike sings, “I know I’ve got to pick a lane here,” and the continuous chorus of “merry go round my head.”
The record’s self-titled closer is where it musically sounds like Maike is starting to feel relieved. It’s a bouncy track, sounding like Tears for Fears writing the menu music for a mid-90s video game. He closes with, “there’s hope for a change, there’s a way to get out, where your love could heal me now, on a light level.”
Deth Rali is a way for Jay Maike to keep making music during the pandemic as he continues to evolve and explore different ways of presenting his work. “I've been incredibly, incredibly fortunate to stay at the college during the pandemic. I'm building my YouTube page right now for audio content, mixing tutorials, weird mad scientist kind of stuff like 'Look Mum No Computer' and 'LNA Does Audio'.”
On whether he’ll be looking to tour again in the future, Maike has no interest. “I'm frankly not that interested in doing bar tours anymore, I've done so many of them by now. I just like technology and music, and performing is fun too, but I'm increasingly using controllers and samplers as my tools. I feel like between the college world and YouTube, I'm discovering a different path where music is still important and live and present without the drugs and shit I hate about the bar scene.”
Like all musicians in the local scene, he’d make an exception for one venue: “it's always been a dream to play at Red Rocks. I'm putting that out into the universe for 2021 and 2022.”
Always active, Deth Rali also has a new single out later this month, a track called “Hot Bots” that he worked on with Snarklet and Yonbre. I also look forward to more ambient experiments like “All The Healing Frequencies Played Together at the Same Time.”
Using music as a power to heal and evolving your musical landscape is where I really connect with Maike and Deth Rali. On this, Maike says:
“I think it's just wild how music is a common thread in my life, but my relationship with it is always changing. For a long time, it was in rock bands and then teaching, and now as an electronic artist and Youtuber. I need to feel that creative evolution to stay inspired.”
Light Levels is available now on Moon Magnet. The album release show will be streaming on Twitch, March 25.
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