Avanti [Explicit Content]

• Track Listing

There are ghosts all across AVANTI, the debut album from

Malice K. At points it's howling and unhinged, a grungy layer

atop a lush foundation of melodic capital-s Songwriting, 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 helmed by visual artist and songwriter Alex

Konschuh, New York-based but born and raised in Olympia,

Washington. Following a stint living in Los Angeles, where he

became a member of the artist collective Death Proof Inc., a trip

to New York resulted in him simply never leaving the city. A

period of chaos ensued, Malice K exhausted and unmoored and

ultimately, unwell.

The record is unpredictable across it's 11 songs. The album opens

with a jarring scream on "Halloween," Malice K's breathless

vocals buried beneath a grungy, roving Nineties riff. The track

emanates a manic energy, enveloping. It's a fitting entrypoint

for the record, and for the vividness of Malice K. The snarling and

obsessive "You're My Girl" has a swaggering paranoia: "I got so

high I thought my hand touching my hand was your hand." But

AVANTI exists in quieter moments too; "Radio," with it's

fluttering morose cello, moves at an almost glacial pace

comparatively. The aching wistfulness of "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."

A recent press interview called Malice K a shapeshifter, but he's

not amorphous in that way. He's decisive and intense, more

concerned with carving his own path, and building his own

world. Every part of Malice K is distinctly himself: from his

sweaty high-octane shows to the high-flash high-contrast

photos; from his gnarled and unsettling illustrations to the

studio recordings that vacillate between grief and tenderness,

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.