New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Premiering as
Radio 1's Hottest Record in The World, Mura Masa has today dropped his incredible new single 'blessing me', featuring Pa Salieu and Skillibeng. He has also confirmed details of upcoming third album demon time, which will see a release on
September 16 via Polydor Records / Universal Music. The head-spinning project features brooding first track '2gether', recent single 'bbycakes' (with Lil Uzi Vert,
PinkPantheress and Shygirl) together with more surprises from the one-of-a-kind UK trailblazer.
Experimental, unexpected and exhilarating, 'blessing me' invites breakout UK rapper Pa Salieu and Jamaican dancehall star Skillibeng into the Mura Masa universe. It's a step, too, into the hedonistic world of forthcoming album demon time, which sees Mura Masa once again channel big themes and nuanced subcultures into thrillingly futuristic pop.
Beneath its hyperreal surface, demon time signals a deeper period of reflection for Mura Masa. He started work on the project shortly after his European tour in support of second album R.Y.C was curtailed by lockdown. Whilst that record's world of imagined memories, raw emotional exploration and nostalgia-as-a-crutch might seem timely, Mura Masa went in the opposite direction: connecting the dots between his genre-shaping, Soundcloud origin story, and electronic music as it exploded on platforms like TikTok to create songs that might soundtrack life ahead. For a while, demon time had the working title of 'Fun', with Alex predicting people would need "vicarious, escapist music now. So that's where this demon time idea came from - how do we soundtrack the 1am to 5am period where you start doing stupid shit that you don't regret but wouldn't do again when it emerges again post-lockdown?"
From its whispered introduction - "it's demon time" - to its messy finish, demon time is a journey into the unknowns of the night, and the quiet revelations you might stumble across along the way. There is a sense throughout of taking guests (and genres) into unfamiliar places, and Mura Masa blurring the boundaries of the artist/producer dynamic into something more curatorial. First single 'bbycakes', for instance, collided the
3 Of A Kind garage classic with a desire for escapism, unlocking an album that constantly screws with the familiar. From its Y2K aesthetic to its who's-who guest-list, demon time ultimately explores ideas like what the future could have been, how a lost generation might find themselves again, and the freedom found by embracing chaos.
Nominated for his second Ivor Award this month for producing PinkPantheress' hit 'Just For Me', Mura Masa has always resisted simple categorization. An innovator as much as a musician, he has been featured on Forbes' illustrious 30 Under 30 list and is a platinum-selling, Grammy-Award-winning (and 4 x nominated) artist, surpassing 2 billion streams and headlining shows at
Alexandra Palace and Warehouse Project along the way. From his quiet upbringing in Guernsey to some of the world's biggest artists jumping on tracks across his catalogue, Mura Masa has always looked towards where things should be heading. A young artist determined to make a difference - Alex also launched his 3T training scheme in 2020, designed to provide training and opportunity for underrepresented groups in the touring and live sector - his goal on demon time remains a constant in an always-unpredictable career: to capture 'that' moment in pop culture, to make it Mura Masa's own, and to move things forward.
"A bruising scrapbook for Britain's maligned and confused…it's a whole lot of fun, too" NME *****
"Mura Masa has built his career so far on a special kind of alchemy, coaxing the best out of - and melding together - a dizzying array of collaborators without ever losing the thread of his own distinct musical identity." Mixmag
"You wouldn't have blamed him for playing it safe…curveball after curveball" The Times ****
"Nothing is beyond possibility in the world of Mura Masa" - Top40-Charts.com
"Mura Masa has set the bar for decades ahead" Dork *****
"Astonishingly talented" GQ
Mura Masa - Summer Live Dates
27.05 - Core Festival, Brussels, Belgium
03.06 - Love Saves The Day, Bristol
04.06 - AVA, Belfast, N.Ireland
09.06 - Primavera, Porto
12.06 - Best Kept Secret, Hilvarenbeek
25.06 - Glastonbury Festival, Somerset,
06.07 - Mad Cool Festival, Madrid
22.07 - Forum, Melbourne
23.07 - Enmore, Sydney
24.07 - Splendour Festival, Yelgun/Byron
27.07 - Town Hall (Elemental Nights), Auckland, New Zealand
31.07 - Fuji Rocks, Niigata, Japan
05.08 - Off Festival, Katowice
27.08 - All Points East, London, UK
www.muramasa.me
