MALICE K IS AN OLYMPIA-BORN MUSICAL AND VISUAL ARTIST CURRENTLY BASED IN NEW YORK. DEVOTING HIS TIME TO ART, HIS FIRST LOVE, ALLOWED HIM TO DISCOVER COLLECTIVES LIKE DEATHPROOF IN LA WHERE HE HAD HIS COME UP. WE SPOKE TO THE YOUNG CREATOR ABOUT THE LISTENING PARTY FOR HIS UPCOMING ALBUM AVANTI, AS WELL AS HIS PERFORMANCE STYLE AND HIS ASSOCIATION WITH DEATHPROOF INC.

Hi Malice K, how are you doing? Do you have anything exciting coming up?

I’m doing a record release party, and we’re just going to be listening to it. There’s this bar, with a movie theatre, and they have old dusty red velvet cushioned chairs, and we’re just gonna pack a bunch of people in there. It’ll be fun to get some in-person validation for the music video and the album as opposed to just doing it through YouTube. I can just sit back and enjoy it as much as everybody there.

Is it stressful to have a bunch of people sitting around and listening to your work?

Totally. But I think it’s kind of safe because half the songs I’ve already been playing live for about a year or so, and it’s not like I’m risking anything showing my music to these people. I feel really worried if there's something genuine at stake. Like my mom was at this show I did recently and it was like the audience might as well have all been my mom, like 300 of my mom – all I could think about was my mom. But she’s not gonna be there this time so it’ll be fine. I think everybody will like it.

Do you sometimes feel pressure to release music?

I mean, I felt that way before because I would just be motivated by wanting to do it for myself, by my own goals. But it’s different now, it feels just as much DIY as it always has been, but I just feel more obligation to others. At the end of the day, I have the biggest reach as a promotion for myself. But it’s just kinda stressful. It’s difficult because when I was just doing art for myself, pretty much everything else in my life was not going that well…And I think I would have burnt out if I hadn’t figured out a way to sustain and have a future. But I think if I didn‘t pass the threshold to where I’m at now, I would have slowed down and maybe I wouldn’t be creating as much.

How would you describe your music style to a novice ear?

Alternative music. It pulls from a lot of different genres. It's not contemporary because it’s lyrical and has a bit more edge to it.

Where does your stage name come from?

I came up with that name for this other artist collective I was a part of in LA called DEATHPROOF. When I joined them, I just needed a cool artist's name. It just sounds cool. My name is Alex Konschuh. When I was growing up, I would sign my things Alex K on everything, on my artwork and I was like, “Malice K is cool.” When I was a teen, I had the nickname ‘Malice Poncho’ because I went on a road trip once and wore a poncho the whole time.

What is DEATHPROOF? What made you decide to drop everything and move to LA?

It was just getting to the point where I needed to do something. I was like 24 going on 25 and living at home. I’d been pushing my art for a while, but I’d been playing music for a long time and around that time I had given up on that becoming something I would pursue professionally. But my friends sent me a video of the DEATHPROOF tour and it was just really inspiring to me and I decided to be honest with myself about what I really wanted to do. So I just kinda gave myself permission to make the music that I really wanted to make and I started writing a bunch of songs that were different to anything I’d done before. And I went out there, made a record and a lot of cool stuff started happening immediately. It was just a really affirming experience.

You perform in uncanny ways, how would you say performance can add or take away from a song?

It looks like how it sounds. Maybe it helps the lyrics come across more, maybe it makes the message more clear. When I’m making the songs, I’m envisioning them to be a little bit more energetic or a little bit tortured. It’s acoustic guitar music and I think it can be misconstrued as indie rock or folk. And I think it’s important to have a performance style around it, in the way that it's intended to be listened to.

Has anything crazy happened during these performances?

Last summer, I was doing a show in Philly, and these guys had painted a backdrop on this super heavy piece of wood which went all the way to the ceiling of this giant warehouse we were playing in. And when I was performing, there was like a song with a drop, and during the drop, I started running around in a circle and I bumped into the piece of wood they had made. And it started falling onto the audience! It was super heavy and everybody was trying to hold up the thing while the song was still playing.

Interview by Gabrielle Valda Colas

Photography by Yaël Temminck

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