There are ghosts all across AVANTI, the debut album from Malice K - 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 a New York-based project helmed by visual artist and songwriter Alex Konschuh, but he was born and raised in Olympia, Washington. Following a stint living in Los Angeles, where he delved further into his music making and became a member of the artist collective Death Proof Inc., a trip to New York funded by a prospective label resulted in him simply never leaving the city.
He started writing the songs here across the last several years, one song at a time. And the resulting. . . READ MORE
There are ghosts all across AVANTI, the debut album from Malice K - 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 a New York-based project helmed by visual artist and songwriter Alex Konschuh, but he was born and raised in Olympia, Washington. Following a stint living in Los Angeles, where he delved further into his music making and became a member of the artist collective Death Proof Inc., a trip to New York funded by a prospective label resulted in him simply never leaving the city.
He started writing the songs here across the last several years, one song at a time. And the resulting AVANTI undulates with a singular acuity, strangely romantic but tragic, tense and startling, even in its quieter, ballad-skewing moments.
The record is unpredictable across its 11 songs. The album opens with a jarring scream on “Halloween,” Malice K’s breathless vocals buried beneath a grungy, roving Nineties riff. But AVANTI exists in a lot of quieter moments – “Radio,” with its fluttering morose cello (Malice K’s first time composing for the instrument), which moves at an almost glacial pace comparatively. “The Old House” is an album stand-out, anchored in an acoustic guitar, an uneasy lullaby that never quite settles into itself: “I think to myself I got the things that I wanted, but I can’t help think there’s something else that I forgot to do.”
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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