“Have you heard of Malice K?”

A few months ago, I would’ve said no to that inquiry, the same one that kicks off the video (below) of Malice K’s album release listening party. Lucky for me (and for you), PAPER social editor Alaska, got me hip to his game after attending a show. So what can you expect from a Malice K show? “It all depends on my mood,” Alex Konschuh, the New York-based artist behind the project, tells PAPER. “Sometimes I have something to say between songs, but it’s rare. A Malice K show is me and the band just playing music. I write the music, I perform the songs and I feel the songs speak for themselves. Aside from that, the shows are different every time.”

Born and raise in Olympia, Washington, Konschuh recently released his debut album AVANTI, a trip through chaos and loss, expressed through a ‘70s pop grungy filter, featuring the standout “Radio” that sees him revelling in sinister sonics in all their gritty slow-burning ballad glory. “I work with a label now and a lot of releases are planned a month or more in advance,” he tells PAPER about the album’s release. “You have to sit with what you made for a long time before putting it out. You can start to turn on yourself and get discouraged. Impulsively putting something out is less painful. The biggest challenge was being patient and believing in myself.”

It looks like the challenge has paid off. Though the album just dropped last month, the fan reaction has been “superb,” Konschuh says Although that did come with its own set of challenges, including some social media stress. Check out our interview with him as he gets candid about the ups, downs and what’s next for his music.

What has the fan reaction felt like for AVANTI thus far?

Feels good. The fan reaction has been superb. The only this is the week of release, Instagram shadow banned my account. I’m trying to get over it, but it deeply saddens me. I’ve been on tour during the release promoting myself, and anybody that wants to follow me that hasn’t heard of me, isn’t able to look me up. We live in a world where real life comes second, but first we find out about anything through social media. That’s how I sell tickets, that’s how I promote myself and ultimately it’s the foundation of my career.

It’s wrong that you can post and be within the guidelines of the app, and they can mess with your career like that. It makes artists scared, and makes them acclimate to what the app wants of them in order to be seen. You have a lot of amazing artists putting out work that aims to please the app, more than it’s aimed to please themselves and their vision. It’s changing our standards for ourselves of what’s beautiful and interesting to us. You hear it and see it in everything. Whenever I see a new movie it’s eerily similar to scrolling on Instagram.

Are there any songs you feel are taking on a different life than you expected for them now that the album’s out?

I’m not really sure. I try to stay disciplined about not checking my numbers on Spotify or anything. It just makes me crazy. I have no idea how the streams are doing, or what song is doing better than another song.

There are lots of different ways people have described your sound — in three words, how would you describe it?

Songs I wrote.

Listeners have really resonated with “Radio.” Can you tell us how that track came together?

I was medicated as a child on antipsychotic medication and I’ve gotten the general message that there’s something wrong with me. I’ve been diagnosed with a lot of mental disorders growing up. I don’t really know what to believe, but I’m just a very emotional person and life is hard. When I wrote that song I was feeling resentful of how much I freak out all the time, and wanting it to go away, but I’m helplessly the way I am.

What can fans expect from Malice K next?

We’re all gonna have to wait and see. My life gets more complicated every day and it feels like I’m just living day-to-day. I’ll sometimes have months straight where I don’t even want to do any of this shit anymore and will feel lost and insecure. I just try to listen to my heart. Right now though it’s telling me I have another album left in me.

Photography: Sharmeen Chaudhary