mal sounds doesn’t mind sitting with his feelings

mal sounds’ music, steeped in slow, grooving introspection, is the first clue of his tendency towards creative intentionality. Born and raised in Brooklyn, a stint studying abroad in Prague led him to take music more seriously. But, it was his return to New York and pandemic downtime in 2020 that helped him hone his sound; fluid, lo-fi R&B inspired by ambient sounds and plenty of self-reflection.

“I was doing a lot of exploration during that time again, because I had so much time on my hands. I categorized myself as a rapper and [exploring] allowed me to step outside that categorization. I still rap sometimes, but I feel like what I'm making is a little more specific to how I feel and how I exist,” he explained. Much of his earlier music found him strictly rapping, pulling from the sounds of the early to mid-2000s as a source of inspiration. But, it was through soul artists like Erykah Badu and D’Angelo to the genre-bending alt-R&B of the aughts that he would find many of the touchpoints for his ambient brand of electro R&B. “I love Blood Orange, and I was listening to a ton of The Internet, Steve Lacy, Tyler the Creator,” he adds. “I think they sort of taught me just to take, like, a multidisciplinary approach as far as genres and whatnot, and to think about sound and textures.”

From that explorative shift, mal says his creative process and overall approach has shifted too. Where he would have started with production as a creative baseline in the past, he tackles songs and projects in a more free-flowing, holistic way, resulting in tracks like the indie rock-inflected “NEVER AGAIN” and his latest single “loveties.” “I'm a producer first, so before I would make a ton of beats all the time and then write to them,” he explained. “Now I usually just have my guitar in my studio and will make a whole song in one go, where the lyrics are coming to me as I'm coming up with the chord progressions.”

It’s within that process that mal often makes parallels to meditation; sitting in the emotions and frequencies that come up while he’s creating and wanting the listener to eventually have a similar experience. It’s a hallmark he pulls from the ambient sounds he pulls inspiration from, and he’s deliberate about differentiating it from escapism. “Sometimes I do traditional meditation, like from time to time. But I think sometimes I try to approach music like meditation, kind of following the same process of trying to empty my mind but also follow my intuition,” he said. “When it's really healing for me is when it's more of a meditative practice rather than the escapism of trying to get away from whatever I'm feeling.”

On his single “VVS,” mal contemplates a move to the West Coast; his comfort in the familiar and desire for change at odds. "I think the city's too hollow, my sister left for L.A./ I think I might have to follow, you think it's better that way," he croons on the track's second verse. Now, he welcomes the idea of stillness and refinement over constant movement and reinvention.“I've just been interested in the value of iterations and of reflecting on something. But just because you're in the same place or making the same loop doesn't mean that you're stagnant,” he explained. “You might notice something different every time you go around, or you're just finding some sort of value in that iteration and deeper understanding. That’s why I like meditation and escapism. We live in a very click bait-y, fast paced world. I'm trying to provide an alternate way, or speed, of thinking about things.”

Thinking and working creatively has been part of mal’s journey from the beginning thanks to his parents, who both work and teach in different creative mediums. It proved the ideal environment for an artist obsessed with texture, form, and feeling. “My dad produces and engineers, and he has this cool home studio. So, I grew up watching him and his associates record in our living room,” he explained. “So the whole bedroom pop, recording in my room thing is very natural.”

His mother, a multimedia artist whose work includes video, photography and tapestry, serves as another huge inspiration for not only his music, but his desire to delve further into his other creative outlets. “I think, like, I think I have a hard time sticking to one medium because of that,” he said. “I realized music can only really be,one angle of my whole vision as an artist. I've always loved music videos and the art and design around everything, too.”

His creative sensibilities, and desire to dabble in different mediums is ultimately what lead him to platforms like ReverbNation and, in particular, BandLab. While working on his most recent project, mal says he’d been steering clear of social media to focus, but following a friend’s recommendation of the platform, he quickly saw the possibilities to express the full, multi-disciplinary scope of his artistry. “What I think I like about it is just how everybody on that platform is really there for the music,” he explained. “So I feel super free to post whatever weird audiovisual ideas come to me because that's my favorite stuff to make.”

Regularly sharing short clips with his audience, some offer a behind the scenes look at his creative process while others track more like abstract visualizers with his music laid over top. “My goal is to make music that feels like nostalgic youth,” says a caption on one of his most recent videos, a clip of him playing guitar to his song “Bushwick baby.” Equal parts marketing and cinematic experimentation, they serve as an outlet for new ideas as they come. “It takes a lot of weight off my brain because I feel like it's one of the only platforms that I've ever used that feels catered to musicians,” he said.. “It's easier to sort of find my flow and test out ideas so when I'm ready to do a whole social media roll out again, I'll have a better idea of what connects.”

With a new project Still In New York set to drop on August 23, mal says the 5-track EP feels like a more focused summation of his previous, usually even shorter releases. “I haven't had real inspiration for a longer project, and I really want to do a concept album and get super into the lore of the project,” he said. “So I want to wait until I have enough material to do that. And that's just the natural process of just, like, I think, living life and getting inspired.”