Standout Artist to Watch: Frank Malachi
Entrenched in a new jazz revival reminiscent of the free flowing harmonies and harp-like sonic structure you’d long to hear from a dream or deep forest, Frank Malachi is an artist to look-out for.
Entrenched in a new jazz revival reminiscent of the free flowing harmonies and harp-like sonic structure you’d long to hear from a dream or deep forest, Frank Malachi is an artist to look-out for. With effervescent vocal swings that pair with low synths, a lullaby saxophone can be heard falling to and fro, opening their tracks up to a feeling of either skimming atop vast water or falling far deeper below the surface, propelled by Malachi’s tonal symmetry. This softness that conjures sounds of Kate Bush delicateness, paired with Bjork sounding backing-tracks results in this ‘wind-chime-y’ echo fit to be heard in galleries or out at sea alike.
From Frank’s current released work, we can paint their view of the genre and their fight to not just 'be the weed that grows tall’. Blooming into swells of mysticism and soft heartbeats, their piece ‘Love The Bone’ comes through in a prophetic chorus tuned in trance. Embodying a feeling of far-swept green rolling fields atop with light refractions or pool-side reflections, Malachi’s vocals billow and surge through the piece, flowing to find their listener in a charmed place suspended above it all.
Further in this sound, their themes are continued with the single ‘Pro-Cure’: only now with a far darker tone. A Hansel and Gretel, fairytale timbre works beautifully to compliment Malachi’s concord vocalism and charming lyrics that sing in some sense of taking ownership of the self through reliance on your identify. This, echoed through the lyric that ‘…to love you was to hit a brick wall…’, compliments the dusky moonless sound that could bring to mind the image of a great asylum garden or the cold but calm floor of the woods at the bottom of the rabbit-hole.
All these sounds, divorced from time in their jazz-esq flow, find themselves in a crescendo within the track ‘We’re Free’. A nautical synth sets the scene with signature harpsichord and souvenir lyricism of stubborn heartache sung to lovers and keepers alike. Esotericism bleeds into further sung words with: ‘…Open wide my chest, Read your name, In my guts, Like a seer, Reads tea leaves…’, backed with a cherub-like plucking of chords and slow, dulcet, mellowed waves. This track brings forth that same bucolic and pastoral imagery only this time though a more melancholy delivery, one that ought to be accompanied naturally by a partner but is nevertheless left alone to sing solo, furthering that sensation of imagery Malachi has worked to push forward in their work.
Frank Malachi is set to release new music soon, one may assume following the experimental balancing of 80’s synth, combining harp and clavichord with equally hexed yet charmed lyrics. Having proved themself clearly as a newcomer with a rare sound, their creative licence to explore through further derivations within the niche genre they’ve found themself in is nowhere near spent. To continue this sound would be, I’m sure, well approved by their steadily growing listeners; to push that sound further however, would be a blessing.