“The music, in a lot of ways, reflects this meditative quality I get from hiking and dancing. They’re two polar opposite things when you’re thinking about them from a distance. With one, you’re alone in the middle of nature. The other involves loud music and groups of people. But my experiences with both of them in the last three years have turned them into a mental health thing, a grounding process. I think about them in the same way. They’re the most ancient, primal release.”
Maggie Rogers,
After leaving an impression on Pharell at a masterclass at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute in February this year, Maryland native Maggie Rogers is ready to impress the music scene with her distinctive dance-folk offerings.
As she revealed in an interview with , Rogers enrolled at NYU with a background in folk music, where she was labelled as 'the banjo girl'. After leaving the Big Apple for a trip through the wilderness in Alaska, Rogers discovered that the setting (which is visually captured in the song's artwork) had inspired a new sonic aesthetic:
“When I had been hiking in summers after Alaska, I had been creating a natural sample bank of birds, noises. A good chunk of the rhythm in the song started from me just patting a rhythm on my jeans. That sample is the main rhythm. Me snapping in a room. I wanted to make dance music, or pop music, feel as human as possible.”
Intention accomplished: "Alaska" leaves you breathless as Rogers lets go of a past relationship and a past self as she sings - with breathy vocals - about 'the air between' the present and the past. Alaska's stunning setting is referenced in the song's opening verse:
'I was walking through icy streamsThat took my breath awayMoving slowly through westward waterOver glacial plains'
Lyrics:
But the focus is more on the rhythm, intimate register and the transcendent sense of possibility in the chilly air. Rogers' breathy falsetto breezes alongside the layered percussion and naturalistic instrumentation (a welcome relief from all the overproduced EDM on the scene), as she dances along to what will hopefully be the beginning of an illustrious career.
'And now, breathe deepI'm inhalingYou and I, there's air in betweenLeave me beI'm exhalingYou and I, there's air in betweenYou and I, there's air in between'.
