Nina Keith Shares New Single 'Blow Up Yr Life (U Need To) [feat. Barrie & Qur'an Shaheed]'

Ahead of a US tour opening for Youth Lagoon in July, LA-based trans artist, producer, and composer, Nina Keith, unveils her dazzling single “Blow Up Yr Life (U Need To)” – feat. indie pop artist Barrie, + composer and musician, Qur’an Shaheed.

The song is accompanied by visuals from Canadian artist Nik Arthur that follows the movement of evaporating water droplets. With roots in classical music and contemporary experimental production, "Nina’s sounds tip-toe into your ears and dance in your mind" (WXPN).

Watch out for more from Nina Keith in 2024.

On the track, Nina Keith offers:

"Lately the more I wear the turmoil of my life on my sleeve the more often I find myself in conversations with strangers and loved ones that reach a similar end. I can never be the one to tell someone to burn it down and start over. They see the ash stains on my shirt and ask to borrow a match so they can play with it, save it for later, but sometimes it’s like “girl, the house is already on fire, you can’t stay in there”.

This song is sort of a small prayer in lieu of words I can never seem to speak in those moments. Divorce your husband, start an onlyfans, borrow friend’s hormones, take them for fun, sell your stuff, buy rare beanie babies with the money whatever you have to do. There is only so much time left.

This song was tracked at Window Room in Philly, at Barrie and Gabby’s studio in Brooklyn, the trailer I lived in for a year in LA, basements and living rooms of dear friends. Recorded and mixed on like 7 different noise music tables."

Nina Keith’s music flows like an iridescent river: naturalistic and charged with a surreal sense of turmoil. Crackling organic textures and fragmented vocal arrangements impose an emotional odyssey. It demands complete surrender as it seeks to find small hits of transcendence in the wake of life’s incessant tragedies.

Nina Keith is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer who has earned her place via an unconventional path. She was born in Philadelphia where she attended Central High School. Before she could join their alumni alongside intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, she was kicked out and dropped out of school altogether. While her friends studied music at universities, she attended her neighborhood beauty school, a basement with “like a dozen 19 year olds, half of us pregnant.”

Relying entirely on her ears, Nina reverse engineered a striking DIY route to composition; reproaching the practice of modern classical contemporaries without any formal training. Her 2019 debut album MARANASATI 19111 was a word-of-mouth favorite: Gorilla vs. Bear described it as “intensely intimate and at once soothing and devastating” and Autostraddle named it one of The 50 Best Albums of the 2010’s Made by Queer/Trans Musicians.

Inspired by her experience in EMDR therapy, it explores a personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents, and seeks to create a more reverent relationship with death and the unknown.

Her new single “Blow Up Yr Life (U Need To)” – featuring indie pop artist Barrie + composer and musician, Qur’an Shaheed – is a remarkable step forward. Written during a turbulent move to Los Angeles, its assemblage of vocal and string arrangements, piano, metallophone, and modular synth conjures images one might see in a vivid dream: rain falling in a labyrinth of mirrors, friends falling out of grasp, or the bite of a cold wind; evoking the sense of groundlessness consistent in all her work.

LIVE DATES

Supporting Youth Lagoon

07/14/23 – Spokane, WA @ Lucky You

07/15/23 – Bozeman, MT @ The Elm

07/17/23 – Sioux Falls, SD @ Club David

07/18/23 – Iowa City, IA @ Gabe's

07/20/23 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club

07/22/23 – Louisville, KY @ The Whirling Tiger

07/23/23 – St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway

07/25/23 – Kansas City, MO @ recordBar

07/26/23 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown

07/28/23 – Fort Collins, CO @ Aggie Theatre

07/29/23 – Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre

07/31/23 – Jackson Hole, WY @ Center Theater

Photo Credit: Mad Bishop

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