Creative Conversations 039: Welcome To Malana's Marvellous World
Words by Luke Byatt
Hailing from the UK, Malana has been soundtracking our year with a selection of sensational singles, and he’s back with ‘Green Juice Movie’. We caught up with the producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist to explore his new single, the project as a whole and much more.
Futuremag Music: Hey Malana, how's COVID life treating you?
Malana: Hey, COVID life has been okay... I'm massively missing going to gigs and just going out and seeing friends like I would have pre-COVID, but I'm in a fortunate position to have not been massively impacted in terms of my livelihood, so it's been important for me to keep things in perspective and actively take time to notice and reflect upon the things I'm grateful for, for the sake of my mental wellbeing! I did find it totally bizarre how everyone went wild for toilet roll during the first lockdown here in the UK. The second lockdown has just been announced so I'm keen to see whether the toilet roll hoarders will resurface.
Futuremag Music: Congratulations on the release of 'Green Juice Movie', but before we dig into the record could you please give us some insight to your relationship with music?
Malana: Thank you! Outside of my Malana stuff I work as a Music & Music Technology tutor, so music is essentially my work and my hobby - it's basically my life! I started learning to play guitar when I was about 12 and went on from there to play in a few bands, mainly doing a lot of Indie/Rock stuff. Then I went to University and started delving deeper into electronic music production, which is when my tastes started to change and I began listening to a lot of Hip-Hop, Downtempo and chilled Electronic stuff which really laid down the foundation for the kind of stuff I'm producing today.
My relationship with music and the way I think about music is always changing because music itself is always changing. I think music is maybe the most powerful form of media for evoking memories/feelings and nostalgia. There are certain songs that I listen to that remind me of some of my happiest moments and the music fully takes me back and makes the memory feel super vivid; but on the flip-side there are some songs that I just can't listen to now because they're attached to sadder memories.
Futuremag Music: We've previously covered a selection of records from you and we're in love! Could you outline the production process for 'Green Juice Movie'? How do you tackle each record you undertake?
Malana: I really appreciate that, thank you. ‘Green Juice Movie’ was another track that I started writing while I was travelling last year. I only had a little second-hand laptop and a pair of headphones while I was away, so I laid down a couple of chord progressions on a virtual piano before mapping out a basic drum groove, not worrying too much about the sounds I was using at this point. The drums and the chords primarily drive the track, so in terms of sound design, I wanted to mesh this almost glitchy, delicate, percussive drum groove with these kind of trashier, lofi-ish sounding piano/rhodes chords.
The drums and the chords formed the bare bones of the track before I got home and fleshed it all out, layering sounds and adding additional “bleepy” synth sounds for texture and 'ear-candy'. I then went on to lay down a string section for the breakdown and outro with a virtual string plug-in I have on my laptop. The virtual strings sounded okay, but I ended up having someone record the part using actual violins, cellos, etc which really brought the sounds to life.
One of the last things I added were the sampled vocal chops. I'll often include sampled vocals in one way or another in my tracks because I think the expressive and emotive nature of a human voice is something that's really difficult to match with other sounds. It's a sound that I love and is a sound that I connect with when listening to music, so it's something that I like to feature in my tracks wherever I can. In terms of my process for tackling each track, it totally varies. Sometimes it'll start with a sample and that will be the foundation for the track, or I'll figure out the chord progression from the sample and play those chords using a synth or piano sound and develop the track from there. Sometimes I'll start with the drums, sometimes some chords, sometimes an acapella track, but there's no one single approach.
Malana (Provided)
Futuremag Music: What does the future look like for Malana?
Malana: More singles and gigs! (fingers crossed for more gigs in general!) I played my first live show at Wild Paths festival in September which was one of the UK's only socially distanced festivals. I never anticipated taking this stuff live when I started out, but now I've got the taste for it and am in the process of lining up some shows for 2021.
Futuremag Music: To wrap it up, if Malana was a cocktail, what would be in it to best describe yourself and your music?
Malana: Sangria, baby! Maybe with pineapple - can be a bit prickly, maybe even a bit off-putting to begin with, but sweet once you get stuck into it.