Maimuna Memon has released her new single ‘Set This House On Fire’ as she prepares to release her debut EP ‘More Than I Bargained For’ on October 13th.
She is an artist who blurs the preconceived boundaries between the worlds of music and theatre, with three of the EP’s tracks featuring in her acclaimed one-woman stage show ‘Manic Street Creature’ which comes to the Southwark Playhouse from October 19th to November 11th.
Her most dramatic song to date, ‘Set This House On Fire’ finds Maimuna delivering her poetic, scene-setting lyrical observations with unrestrained passion and candid expression: her soft coos capturing the rush of moment just as powerfully as her words. The track is released alongside a live video performed with cellist Gabriella Swallow on Hampstead Heath.
It represents the second visual in the series following the previous live take on ‘Insomnia’. Maimuna says: “‘Set This House On Fire’ is about lust and love. It’s a song about those first few fizzy and charged weeks you spend with someone new.
“How alert you are to every touch they make and every word they say. How intoxicating it can be. It’s also about the hope of finding someone in life who understands you.”
In the Fringe First Award winning ‘Manic Street Creature’, love, lust, and late nights collide in a musical rollercoaster, taking the audience through the euphoria and distress of two people dealing with their own and each other’s mental health. Maimunaplays Ria, who is working with her band to complete a new album full of songs which chart the rise and fall of a recent relationship.
But the more Ria progresses, the more she’s drawn back to the darkness of her troubled past, until we’re not sure where memory ends and reality begins. Maimuna Memon is currently best known for her role as Nikki in Richard Hawley’s ‘Standing At The Sky’s Edge’ musical, a performance which earned an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical.
Further awards followed for ‘Manic Street Creature’ in the wake of its run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022, before Maimuna launched a career as a recording artist in tandem to her theatre work. Her collaborators have included Charlie Andrew (Alt-J, Wolf Alice), Jonathan Quarmby (Benjamin Clementine, Lewis Capaldi) and Neil Comber (M.I.A., Florence + The Machine), while initial tastemaker support has come from Self Esteem, Jessie Ware, Jamz Supernova, NME, The Line of Best Fit, The Guardian, The Independent, Clash and Wonderland.
Music has been a big part of her life since growing up in Darwen near Blackburn, with her varied talents also including the violin, piano, drums, guitar and harmonium. The daughter of an Irish mother and a Pakistani father, she grew up in a largely white area where she struggled to find her place and connect with her family heritage - an issue that was compounded by a sudden move to Australia in her teens.
Her identity was changed when she discovered and related to the concept of third culture kids: children who spend their formative years away from their parents’ homeland and feel as if they’re between two different cultural communities.
