IT BEGINS WITH A SCREAM…

The antithesis of the yelp at the beginning of James Brown’s I Feel Good; Malice K does not, in fact, feel good. His is a pained, throat-shredding yell kickstarting the Washington-born musician’s debut record, AVANTI. The culmination of years exercising his demons, seeking places he fits, and escaping ones he doesn’t. In parts, songs rip through the speakers, amped and angst’d, Malice K’s inner paranoia exposed through bristling 90’s distortion, in other parts, vulnerability is unplugged and unflinching. On stage, these dualities twist and tear, sending Malice K flying into the audience.

Alex James Taylor: Hey, how’s it going?
Malice K: It’s going good, I’m out visiting home right now.

AJT: In Washington? How is it?
MK: It’s been really good. I’m just taking a break from everything.

AJT: I wanted to ask you about growing up in Olympia. Washington is known for its lo-fi garage sound and the Riot grrrl movement with Bikini Kill coming from there, alongside K Records. How was it growing up from a music perspective?
MK: That’s really what attracted so many people to the town, the vibrant music scene. There weren’t really any club or bar venues, it was just all these house shows that the people who lived there would throw every week. This would bring a lot of people to Olympia, so you’re constantly hearing this weird new music and yeah, they were able to maintain these elements of punk rock for a long time as the shows were pretty unhinged. I don’t know if that’s kind of gone away now. You see the subtle gentrification and changes, it’s happening everywhere. People are talking about it like it’s a big city problem, when really it’s everywhere. The culture of the town, of it being a sort of art town and having a really great music scene had been maintained since the late 80s. I share a lot of common memories with my uncle and even my grandpa, like, “I just saw a show there last night,” and he’ll go “Yeah, we used to go there.” [These] outstanding traditions have disappeared in the last couple of years.

“I viewed people who were playing music as kind of superheroes”

AJT: Were you playing music back then, or were you just watching?
MK: I was just watching, learning. I was completely excited and enamoured by people [making music]. I viewed people who were playing music as kind of superheroes. I didn’t really know how that was possible for them to be up there, I was just a teenager and felt lucky to be there. There was this one house called the Track House and it was one of the raunchiest of the show houses, it was the super crust punk one and if you look it up on YouTube there’s a bunch of videos. They’d really pack out and play all these hardcore bands. In high school, I used to sneak out of my house and bartend at the shows – I mean, there wasn’t actually a bar. I just wanted to form a relationship with them so that I could have an easy in to the shows and be a part of it.

AJT: When you moved from Olympia to LA you were part of Deathproof Inc [an artist collective]. That ethos mirrors the same sort of collective DIY energy you saw in Olympia.
MK: Yeah, it was really cool to see that because I think they were really trying to emulate that scene I had come from. That’s what drew me to them initially. It was really familiar to me and I liked that. It was something that was happening now and it was exciting. It had these elements of DIY, 90s garage, punk culture, but it wasn’t ironic or anything, which I really liked. Everybody was being super serious, and their music was serious. Everybody went by alter egos and aliases and I thought that was cool.

AJT: Was LA when you really started writing music?
MK: I’ve always been writing music since I started playing guitar when I was like, sixteen or seventeen. I was writing songs constantly but I really wasn’t set on what my style was, I was very durable. I was discovering new music all the time, trying out different styles. Then I got to a point where I would do open mics and I really didn’t have the courage to say, “Oh, I’m a musician, come and see me play my music.” I was not secure in it. I was like, “Well, why would I be trying to promote something that I’m still figuring it out?”

AJT: Were those songs related to the ones now at all?
MK: Not really. I mean, you can pick apart some elements in them that are similar, but you can tell I’m afraid of my own voice. It passes as singing but I’m not really singing. It didn’t really click for me until I saw a Deathproof video. It was just very unapologetic. It made me realise that I have so many fucking problems and it’s actually been a very hard time for me for a long time and I don’t know why I’m acting like I need to be… Whatever. Seeing that gave me a lot of permission to be honest with myself and not feel bad about it. Then all these songs just started coming out of me and people understood what I was saying. I put out Beautiful People [2020] as the first single and I remember I was writing it at home and felt so guilty about being that honest with myself, it felt selfish or something because it’s like, I had friends and people who love me, but in general, I felt very isolated. I felt very pushed aside and I felt really upset about a lot of things. I didn’t show it to anybody [at first]. But then when I did put it out, it ended up being a more honest representation of how I was feeling and people were immediately very receptive to that.

AJT: That authenticity certainly comes through in your music. You then moved from LA to New York, in the album notes it mentions how you became somewhat lost in the city’s nightlife. I’m curious to know more about that, and how that influenced the album.
MK: I don’t know. It just felt that in order to do certain things I’d never done before, I needed to become a new person. I went there on a one-way ticket after living in LA for a year or two. I got a call to sign a record deal out in New York and I’d literally just lost my place in LA ten minutes before I got this phone call. I went [to New York] and the very first thing was, I’d never spoken to anybody who had as much power as the people I was speaking to and like, I didn’t really know anything about the industry and basically I just didn’t trust anybody. I got like 30k for my first [record] deal and I felt so guilty. I was giving it away to a bunch of people back home and recklessly spending it and buying drugs and drinking a ton and just freaking out over the pressure I was putting on myself. I didn’t realise that there are so many degrees of success and there are millions of artists I’ve never heard of who are making a living and doing these things. It’s not this make-or-break thing – I didn’t understand that at the time. I got to a point where I’d been there for almost a year and I’d lost all the money from my record deal. I was just really messed up on drinking and drugs. All of this came crashing down on me and I didn’t have the album out, it wasn’t even done or anything. I just couldn’t let it be that way. I was like, that’s just the worst story ever, “He got his record deal, he went there and guess what, he didn’t make the record. He lost all the money, got a drug problem.” I fucked up and I couldn’t handle it, but I was like, I’m going to make the record and do what I came to do. Then basically the moment I finished the record, Jagjaguwar was like, “We want to sign you,” and that was insane. My life was back, I got a second chance.

AJT: The album is incredible, I love how it starts with a scream, that immediate burst of emotion. Can you take me through the thinking behind that?
MK: I don’t really remember. I think it’s one of those things where you’re listening to the song and then you just hear it in there, then we did it. I like the idea of the album starting out that way – that’s the first sound to pull you into it. There’s a lot of acoustic and softer songwriting on this project and I wanted to figure out the right way to mix everything up where it’s more of a journey.

“I had a natural inclination towards these emaciated creepy things.”

AJT: I’m always interested in how an album begins and ends, those first and last lines. On that track, Halloween, there’s also a lot of heavy breathing and a lot of whispered sounds, it really creates this sense of paranoia and intimacy – it sets the tone. There’s a sophisticated mix of loud and quiet throughout the record, did you have to learn to embrace that softness and vulnerability and turn the volume down sometimes?
MK: I think it’s the opposite. I feel like I learned how to embrace being louder. I mean, all my earlier stuff was very quiet and reserved. I think for a while I felt embarrassed by it and wanted to avoid doing that, but with this last project I just naturally played these kind of melodic sad songs, but then also I have a lot of high energy. [The album] is just more me. Also the older I get, I’m like, I don’t really want to be moshing forever. And at the end of the day, I’m not really that guy. I have my moments where I feel like freaking out or I feel like doing something on stage that’s kind of crazy, but that’s just if I happen to feel that way, I don’t want to set myself up to be the crazy live guy.

AJT: Which songwriters have really inspired you?
MK: I listen to all sorts of different music and some of [my songs] will be inspired by one song I’ve heard, or one aspect of a song. I was really influenced by Megan Thee Stallion. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but that track Body where she’s talking about her body, I thought that was kind of cool. I felt like I was trying to kind of take that essence. Influences can be pretty abstract. Like, my playlist on my phone is just fucking weird. It’ll be Linkin Park and then Nancy Sinatra, then some country song and then 50 Cent.

AJT: And what do you think AVANTI taught you about yourself?
MK: It was definitely the hardest I’ve worked on something and the most dedicated I have been to something. It proves to me that I can follow through with certain things. It’s my first big official release and previously I would be wanting a lot of validation before it’s ready, I would always be previewing songs [with] no date for [release], just really wanting the reinforcement that I’m heading in the right direction. With this project, I tried to hold back from previewing it too much and I think that did a lot for me. I’ve never really done anything like that before. I’ll [usually] let my insecurities get to me first. I got to the other side of being more comfortable with saying less.

AJT: I also want to ask about your drawings. You’ve done the artwork for a few of your EP covers, and you did a stop-motion video for the track Complicated Dreams. Is that something you’ve always been interested in?
MK: Drawing was my initial passion. Since I was like three or four, I was always drawing and I was particularly obsessed with anatomy, mummies, skeletons – macabre things. I had a natural inclination towards these emaciated creepy things. I was always obsessed with trying to bring out an idea of the creature. And I don’t know, it’s just stuck with me.

AVANTI is out now.
Follow Malice K on Instagram.

hair CHEEKY MAA; make-up YUUI; photography assistant BRANDON ABREU; fashion assistant JANAI RODRIGUEZ; special thanks 16 BEAVER STUDIO