Malice K has shared his brand new single, ‘Weed’, taken from his forthcoming new album and first for Jagjaguwar, AVANTI, out 23rd August.
There are ghosts all across Malice K’s debut full-length AVANTI – the record wades through a disarray of chaos and loss with a sharp-toothed fervor. At points it’s howling and unhinged, a grungy layer atop a lush foundation of melodic capital-s Songwriting akin to the golden-age pop of the ‘70s, but in other moments it dissolves into a gentle, wistful haunting. Malice K’s songs are blunt, uncomplicated and unflinching as he probes the interiority of memories, of mistakes – saturated with an innate intensity that sucks you into his gnarled and visceral world, so barbed it could draw blood.
Malice K is the New York-based project helmed by visual artist and songwriter Alex Konschuh, who was born and raised in Olympia, Washington. But it was a stint living in Los Angeles where he first delved further into his music making and became a member of the artist collective DeathProof Inc. This birthed a pair of introductory, blistering, and at times poignant and heartfelt, 20-min EPs (the Deathproof-released Harm or Heck, in 2020, and self-released Clean Up on Aisle Heaven, 2022).
A trip to New York funded by a prospective label followed, which resulted in Malice simply never leaving. Debut album AVANTI chronicles the chaos and instability of his first two years in the city, acting as a diary of the turmoil in that period of his life.
Earlier this year Malice K released AVANTI’s first single ‘Radio’ in the same week he graced the cover of NME. The interview highlighted his compelling, honest songwriting and called him “a shapeshifter”, but while he isn’t pinned by one genre, he’s also decisive and intense, more concerned with carving his own path, and building his own world, rather than finding ways to fit into what already exists. Every part of Malice K is distinctly himself – felt even in the visual components, like the ‘Radio’ single tape-and-scissors artwork, the illustrations for the inside of the album packaging, the AVANTI album cover featuring a sculpture he made in collaboration with Cheeky Ma. From his sweaty high-octane shows to the high-flash high-contrast photos; from his gnarled and unsettling illustrations to the studio recordings that vacillates between grief and tenderness at the drop of the hat, there’s an exceptional ferocity across everything Malice K touches. AVANTI feels lived in, like peering into an abandoned house through a window smeared with grimy fingerprints, relics of a life well-lived scattered inside – despite being a debut, there’s the sense that Malice K arrived fully-realized, imperfections and all.
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