Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 20, 2026

Maria Minerva

Maria Juur, better known by her stage name Maria Minerva, is an Estonian musician, producer and DJ based in Los Angeles. She has recorded mainly for the Los Angeles labels Not Not Fun and its imprint 100% Silk, and in 2015 won two Estonian Music Awards. Her music is a part of the second wave of hypnagogic pop.

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Maria Minerva
Maria Minerva (2014)
Born
Maria Juur

(1988-03-15) March 15, 1988
Tallinn, then part of Estonian SSR, Soviet Union
Citizenship
Alma materEstonian Academy of Arts (BA)
Goldsmiths, University of London (MA)
Musical career
GenresElectronica, outsider house, nu-disco, avant pop, hypnagogic pop, lo-fi music
Occupationsproducer, songwriter, singer
Instrumentselectronics, vocals
Years active2010–present
LabelsNot Not Fun, 100% Silk, Pudru Kuul, viis
Websitewww.mariaminerva.com

Maria Juur (born 15 March 1988),12 better known by her stage name Maria Minerva, is an Estonian musician, producer and DJ based in Los Angeles.32 She has recorded mainly for the Los Angeles labels Not Not Fun and its imprint 100% Silk,4 and in 2015 won two Estonian Music Awards.5 Her music is a part of the second wave of hypnagogic pop.

Early life and education

Juur grew up in Tallinn.67 She is the daughter of the Estonian humorist, television presenter and music critic Mart Juur.89

She graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a bachelor's degree in art history in 2010.8 She obtained a master's degree in aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London,21 where she studied with the British cultural theorist and music critic Mark Fisher.10

Career

Juur began recording music in London in 2009, while interning at The Wire, after buying instruments and equipment online.1112 She signed with Not Not Fun after emailing the label on the last day of 2010.13 She began releasing music in 2011, when Not Not Fun and 100% Silk issued her album-length cassette Tallinn at Dawn914 and the 12-inch Noble Savage.9 The second album, Cabaret Cixous, followed that August on Not Not Fun; its title nods to the French feminist theorist Hélène Cixous.15 According to the Russian music outlet Zvuki.ru, the title alludes simultaneously to the band Cabaret Voltaire,6 which she cited among her influences around this time.9 In a later interview, she would also mention Cosey Fanni Tutti, Lætitia Sadier, Kim Gordon and Laurie Anderson as musical influences from youth.12 Reviewing the album for The Quietus, Rory Gibb called the record "bedroom pop with ambitions far more expansive than its four walls".16

In 2012 Minerva released two albums on Not Not Fun: Will Happiness Find Me?17 and The Integration LP, a collaboration with label co-owner Amanda Brown's LA Vampires project, which The Quietus's Charlie Fox wrote "settles into a rhythm of intermittent greatness".18 Her fourth solo album, Histrionic (Not Not Fun, 2014), written after a move from London to New York, drew on contemporary club music; Fact's Maya Kalev found it "an enjoyable bedroom curiosity rather than a high achievement",19 while the Estonian culture newspaper Müürileht wrote it was, "according to many critics her best album yet".4 At the Estonian Music Awards in January 2015 she won Best Female Artist and Best Electronica Album for Histrionic.5 After a five-year break from solo albums, she returned in September 2020 with Soft Power, released digitally and on cassette by 100% Silk and described by XLR8R as "neon-lit diva-pop disco".20

Minerva remixed John Cale for the 2012 release Extra Playful: Transitions,21 and appeared on the track "Remynd" from Cities Aviv's 2012 album Black Pleasure.22 She performed with Mark Van Hoen at the Unsound festival in New York in 2012,23 and in 2013 recorded the collaborative mix Maria2maria with the artist Maria Chavez.24 She appeared in Silk, a 2013 documentary about 100% Silk's 2012 tour.25

With Ugnius Gelguda she created the soundtrack for Popcorn, Pepsi, Petabytes, a 2014 exhibition at the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard.26 Her music appears in the visual artist Phil Collins's listening-booth installation my heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced...,27 and she composed the soundtrack for Les Singes (2017), a performance work by Naomi Toth and the poet Vanessa Place.28 She has hosted Estonian Air, a monthly programme on the Los Angeles community radio station Dublab.29 She appeared in u.Q., a 2021 documentary by Ivar Murd about the musician Uku Kuut.30

Collaboration with Cherushii

Minerva was a friend, labelmate and collaborator of the San Francisco producer Chelsea Faith Dolan, artistically known as Cherushii. In 2016, Dolan died in the Ghost Ship warehouse fire along with 35 other people.3132 The two had written and recorded the bulk of six tracks together in the three years before Faith's death; Minerva completed the recordings with electronic music producers David Last, Adam Gunther and Brian Foote. 100% Silk released the material as the EP Cherushii & Maria Minerva in February 2019.3233 The EP also repurposes two tracks from earlier Cherushii releases: "Thin Line", which first appeared on her 2015 album Memory of Water,34 and "Nobody's Fool (Vocal Version)", originally released as an instrumental in 2015.35

viis label

In 2025 Minerva founded the label viis, whose first release collected previously unissued 2000s recordings by the Estonian pop-punk band Plixid, together with remixes by Minerva and Estonian musician Ines Daferrari.3637

Critical reception

Fact called Minerva's music "arch avant-pop"17 and described her as an "experimental chanteuse",38 while Dazed & Confused characterized her early recordings as "densely yearning, electronic bedroom jams".9 NPR praised her "beautiful and mysterious lead vocals",39 Interview wrote that her singing "evokes the alienated soul of Nico",1 and Spin discussed her reverb-laden records among indie acts indebted to the music of Twin Peaks.40 Reviewing the 2011 EP Sacred & Profane Love for Pitchfork, Lindsay Zoladz called it "Minerva's most immediate release yet" and her music "a place where academia and pop culture… commingle in a hazy, libidinous swirl",41 and reviewing her 2019 EP with Cherushii, Pitchfork's Harley Brown described her "featherweight (and at times ever so slightly off-key) croon" as "a cross between Blossom Dearie, Brigitte Bardot, and the Estonian pop singers she grew up listening to".42

Critics in the 2010s placed Minerva's music within the lo-fi and hypnagogic pop current of the period.121639 Zvuki.ru counted her among the most representative artists of lo-fi's second generation.6 In 2011 Simon Reynolds named her among the foremost of a new wave of female synth musicians in a New York Times feature, describing her music as "hazy lo-fi synthpop".15 Fact wrote that she had come to embody the DIY aesthetic of her labels, Not Not Fun and 100% Silk.19 Writing in The Quietus, Rory Gibb distinguished her from other stylistically related Not Not Fun artists by her music's physicality and sense of motion.16

NPR presented her in 2012 as the first artist to bring the sound out of the Baltic region, and as a potential forerunner for other Estonian acts.39 Writing for Bandcamp Daily in 2018, Daniel Dylan Wray called her "perhaps one of Estonia's best-known and celebrated contemporary artists",3 and Müürileht described her in 2015 as one of the few artists from Estonia to have "emerged to the top of the global alternative music scene".4 The online magazine Estonian World placed her on its 2015 list of the "Top 12 most outstanding Estonian women in the world".2 The Guardian included her in its 2017 interactive feature "The Sound of LA".43

Personal life

After leaving Estonia she lived in London and New York before settling in Los Angeles in the mid-2010s.4 She worked in the United States on O-1 "extraordinary ability" visas from 2013, obtained permanent residency in 2015,44 and later became a United States citizen.8

Discography

LPs

  • Tallinn At Dawn CS (Not Not Fun, 2011)4
  • Cabaret Cixous LP (Not Not Fun, 2011)4
  • The Integration LP with LA Vampires (Not Not Fun, 2012)4
  • Will Happiness Find Me? LP (Not Not Fun, 2012)4
  • Histrionic LP (Not Not Fun, 2014)4
  • Soft Power CS (100% Silk, 2020)20

EPs

  • Ruff Trade EP (2011)4
  • Noble Savage 12" EP (100% Silk, 2011)4
  • Sacred & Profane Love 12" EP (100% Silk, 2011)4
  • Nii hea with Ajukaja, 10" single (Pudru Kuul, 2012)
  • Bless 12" EP (100% Silk, 2013)4
  • C U Again with Ajukaja, 12" EP (Pudru Kuul, 2014)4
  • Cherushii & Maria Minerva with Cherushii, 12" EP (100% Silk, 2019)3233
  • Contact High 12" EP (viis, 2026)
References

References

  1. Diehl, Matt (August 24, 2012). "Maria Minerva". Interview. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  2. "Top 12 most outstanding Estonian women in the world". Estonian World. March 8, 2015. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  3. Wray, Daniel Dylan (April 24, 2018). "The Modern Music of Estonia". Bandcamp Daily. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  4. Mõttus, Mariliis (February 14, 2015). "The Crowned Queen of Estonian Underground". Müürileht. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  5. "Curly Strings makes a clean sweep at Estonian Music Awards". ERR News. January 16, 2015. Retrieved June 10, 2026. An alternative dance artist Maria Minerva who has resided in London and New York for many years and has a cult following over there, was a somewhat surprise winner, notching up two awards: Best Female Artist and Best Electronica Album.
  6. Kurkin, Dmitry (January 17, 2012). Lo-Fi движение — это горстка людей в спальнях, рассеянная по Америке и Европе [The lo-fi movement is a handful of people in bedrooms, scattered across America and Europe]. Zvuki.ru (in Russian). Retrieved June 10, 2026. Пару лет назад Мария Юур (Maria Juur) переехала из родного Таллина в Лондон, обложилась купленными через интернет инструментами и примочками и стала сочинять комнатную поп-музыку. ... название «Cabaret Cixous» намекает одновременно на пионеров индастриала Cabaret Voltaire и философа и теоретика пост-структурализма Элен Сиксу. ... Мария Минерва, за какой-то год превратившаяся из читателя Wire в его героя, пожалуй, один из самых показательных примеров этой второй волны лоу-фая. [A couple of years ago Maria Juur moved from her native Tallinn to London, surrounded herself with instruments and effects bought over the internet, and began composing bedroom pop music. ... the title "Cabaret Cixous" alludes simultaneously to the industrial pioneers Cabaret Voltaire and to the philosopher and post-structuralist theorist Hélène Cixous. ... Maria Minerva, who in the space of a year turned from a Wire reader into one of its subjects, is perhaps one of the most illustrative examples of this second wave of lo-fi.]
  7. Moreland, Quinn (March 5, 2019). "How Maria Minerva Finished Her Record With Cherushii, Who Died in Oakland's Ghost Ship Fire". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 5, 2021. I first wrote "This Must Be the Place" about my hometown, Tallinn.
  8. Hasa, Romi (August 26, 2021). "Maria Juur, Õismäe tüdruk Los Angeleses" [Maria Juur, Õismäe Girl in Los Angeles]. Eesti Naine (Delfi) (in Estonian). Retrieved January 12, 2024. Ma lõpetasin keskkooli 2006. aastal ja sain oma bakalaureusekraadi kunstiteaduses aastal 2010 ... Nüüdseks on temast saanud USA kodanik, kuuma ja kummalise Los Angelese püsielanik. ... (Maria isa on humorist, saatejuht ja muusikakriitik Mart Juur. – R. H.) [I finished secondary school in 2006 and received my bachelor's degree in art history in 2010 ... By now she has become a US citizen, a permanent resident of hot and strange Los Angeles. ... (Maria's father is the humorist, television presenter and music critic Mart Juur. – R. H.)]
  9. Ulrik Noergaard (March 31, 2011). "Maria Minerva". Dazed & Confused. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  10. Maria Minerva (January 25, 2017). "Perspective: Maria Minerva remembers Mark Fisher's Infectious Intellectualism". Crack Magazine. Retrieved June 10, 2026. I met Mark in 2010 at Goldsmiths. Him and fellow music writer Kodwo Eshun were the driving forces behind the new and rather experimental MA program in Aural & Visual Cultures.
  11. Gibb, Rory (September 1, 2011). "Sunken Disco: Maria Minerva Talks Downloads, DJing & Dance Music". The Quietus. Retrieved June 10, 2026. I was interning at Wire part time, I wasn't really doing much, and just thought I needed a hobby, so went online and bought random shit from the internet. ... it was all the stuff I had done from when I started in 2009 to when I got signed.
  12. "Maria Minerva". PRS for Music. Archived from the original on September 21, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  13. Gibb, Rory (September 1, 2011). "Sunken Disco: Maria Minerva Talks Downloads, DJing & Dance Music". The Quietus. Retrieved June 10, 2026. I just sent them an email on the last day of 2010 and they replied. They were reading their emails on New Year's Eve ... They just replied and said 'let's put out everything you've ever done'.
  14. "Maria Minerva wonders Will Happiness Find Me? · News ⟋ RA". Resident Advisor. Retrieved 2026-06-11.
  15. Reynolds, Simon (October 7, 2011). "Female Artists With a Penchant for Synth Sounds". The New York Times. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
  16. Gibb, Rory (August 15, 2011). "Maria Minerva: Cabaret Cixous". The Quietus. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  17. "Stream Maria Minerva's adventurous new album for Not Not Fun in full". Fact. September 5, 2012. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  18. Fox, Charlie (November 12, 2012). "LA Vampires & Maria Minerva: The Integration LP". The Quietus. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  19. Kalev, Maya (May 7, 2014). "Histrionic". Fact. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  20. Cheadle, Luke (August 13, 2020). "The Cyclist, Maria Minerva, Jupiter Jax, and Pleasure Model Next on 100% Silk". XLR8R. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  21. "Stream Tim Hecker and Maria Minerva's takes on John Cale". Fact. April 12, 2012. Retrieved June 10, 2026. Now, on Extra Playful: Transitions, he's been remixed by some of the cream of the underground in Actress, Maria Minerva and Alva-Noto ...
  22. Cohen, Ian (November 26, 2012). "Cities Aviv: Black Pleasure". Pitchfork. Retrieved January 20, 2024. The moaning sample that punctuates every bar of "Escorts" completely dominates the sonic field and the lack of definition on "Remynd" makes the appearance of Maria Minerva a complete non-event.
  23. "Unsound LABs: Denis Kolokol/Tomek Choloniewski Duo + Nate Wooley, Maria Minerva + Mark Van Hoen, Mark McGuire + Bartosz Weber". Issue Project Room. April 22, 2012. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  24. "Listen: exclusive Maria2maria mix – Maria Chavez + Maria Minerva". The Wire. May 2013. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  25. Jackson, Glenn (October 23, 2013). "100% Silk Documentary on the Way; Watch the Trailer Now". XLR8R. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  26. "Popcorn, Pepsi, Petabytes". Bard Center for Curatorial Studies. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  27. "Phil Collins: my heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart". Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Retrieved June 10, 2026. The selected recordings were shared with a group of musicians, including David Sylvian, Scritti Politti, Lætitia Sadier, Maria Minerva and Damon & Naomi, Planningtorock, and others, who used the telephone booth audio to create new songs played on record players in the listening booths.
  28. "Les Singes: A Passion Play for Today". Emergency Index. 2018. Retrieved June 10, 2026. "Les Singes" [The Monkeys] is a passion play in reverse. It includes a soundtrack by Maria Minerva, and a video piece, "Traffic," by Vanessa Place. ... first performed on October 28, 2017.
  29. "Maria Minerva w/guest Nite Jewel: Estonian Air (01.15.18)". Dublab. January 15, 2018. Retrieved January 20, 2024.
  30. "u.Q." Kino Artis. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
  31. Maria Juur AKA Maria Minerva (December 9, 2016). "The Rave Queen Next Door: Remembering the Life and Legacy of My Friend Cherushii". Vice. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  32. Murray, Eoin (February 7, 2019). "Premiere: Cherushii & Maria Minerva 'Boyfriend Shirt'". DJ Mag. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  33. Henry Bruce-Jones (January 15, 2019). "100% Silk to release posthumous Cherushii & Maria Minerva collaboration". Fact. Retrieved June 10, 2026. Thanks to David Last, Adam Gunther and Brian Foote the recordings have since been finalized ... Cherushii & Maria Minerva's S / T arrives on February 15.
  34. Matthew, Terry (September 4, 2019). "Days Without You: Cherushii and Maria Minerva Made Beautiful Music". 5 Mag. Retrieved June 10, 2026. "Thin Line" is far and away the most striking and may be the best remembered of Cherushii's tracks ... it originally appeared on Memory of Water.
  35. Brown, Harley (February 19, 2019). "Cherushii / Maria Minerva: Cherushii & Maria Minerva". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 5, 2021. Cherushii & Maria Minerva also repurposes a couple of tracks from previous Cherushii releases that fit in easily with their more recent counterparts: "Thin Line" is a Balearic-tinged highlight from 2015's ambient dreamscape Memory of Water, while "Nobody's Fool (Vocal Version)" originally appeared as an instrumental on a three-tracker of the same name, also in 2015.
  36. "Estonian girls' long lost 2000s punk hits resurface in surprise release". ERR News. October 28, 2025. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  37. "Plixid: A Lost 2000's era Feminist Pop-Punk Band from Estonia". In Sheep's Clothing Hi-Fi. November 11, 2025. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  38. "Experimental chanteuse Maria Minerva announces full details of new album". Fact. July 20, 2012. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  39. "Maria Minerva: The Rise Of Estonian Chillwave". NPR. April 5, 2012. Retrieved June 10, 2026.
  40. Weingarten, Christopher R. (April 27, 2012). "Why Lana Del Rey, Cults, and More Indie Heartachers Lurk in the Shadows of 'Twin Peaks'". Spin. Retrieved June 10, 2026. her smeary, detached dance music haunts the Color Me Badd era the same way Lynch's Roy Orbison–laced soundtracks shattered the '50s dream. Her records are coated in Cruise reverb, but not because she was a huge Peaks fan.
  41. Zoladz, Lindsay (November 30, 2011). "Maria Minerva: Sacred & Profane Love EP". Pitchfork. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
  42. Brown, Harley (February 19, 2019). "Cherushii / Maria Minerva: Cherushii & Maria Minerva". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  43. Barlow, Eve; Morris, Sam (February 7, 2017). "The Sound of LA". The Guardian.
  44. Salazar, Fortunato (January 28, 2016). "Alien of Extraordinary Ability: An Interview with Maria Minerva". Fanzine. Retrieved June 10, 2026. A fact that not everyone knows about me is that, since 2013, the document that authorizes my legal employment in this country is the O-1 ... I had two O-1 visas and was able to finally get the same type of green card last year.
External links