By Frank Bell
Following their unruly live performance at Camden Rocks All-Dayer, London-based outfit Love Malsion present their convincing new single ‘Pseudo’ and answer our questions.
Hello Love Malison how are you?
Feeling fantastic & probably over-caffeinated, thank you
You’ve released single ‘Pseudo’, can you tell us about the themes contained within the song?
I guess you could call it a plea for artists to put the quality of the work first, and the need for relevance & acceptance second. There is an obvious nod toward political music in there – I don’t know if there’s a need to call Boris Johnson a p**** anymore, we all know it now, it’s common knowledge, so I don’t feel a great need to say that or anything remotely similar, especially as the white frontman of a band full of men. I want to hear what more marginalized people have to say with regards to politics in their music, and for them to get more of the spotlight. I have inadvertently gone political there, I know
How does the writing process work when formulating new ideas for new music?
This song was the first true collaboration of someone having a riff in the practice room, someone else suggesting an alteration on it, me going and writing a lyric around it and knocking together a structure. Most of the band’s lifetime has been spent in the days of COVID, so there was a lot of exchanging ideas over WhatsApp and me knocking together demos on my laptop, we were blessed by technology that whole time, not just musicians either
What was the concept behind the video?
This song is always so much fun live, so we were knocking about ideas for something a bit more high concept, and it was just like “what’s the point?” Let’s get our friend Sam Rockman down to our first headline at Camden Assembly with a crew, capture it, and present it as it feels live
As a London-based band, does the city influence the kind of music you produce?
Living in London is intense, and I guess you could call some of our music intense so that matches up, admittedly I find more fascination in writing about the small town I’m from, and the sort of leaving there & going someplace else, than hearing about what’s going down back home. Our next release after Pseudo that we’re recording right now has a lot of reference to my hometown, some of it wistful & some of it quite excitable, I imagine I’ll get onto writing about London a bit more once that’s out of my system
How has the music industry changed since you began playing in bands?
The emphasis on social media is obviously only getting greater, I probably didn’t think at like 16 in the earlier days of facebook that the ultimate route to the industry’s heart would be likes & follows. I was quite insistent that this not be a band that tries to play the game so to speak, in terms of moulding ourselves into something the industry would eat up, I don’t think we’ve sold out on that yet
Where do you think your music fits in today’s world?
You know, probably the best thing about social media is the ease of access to new artists, so I don’t think it matters as much about having mass appeal to everyone, or even everyone who’s into a particular sub-genre, everything’s a lot more fragmented. It’d be great to have millions of people into the band, but there’s never been a better time to be a cult band than now
If you were stranded on a desert island which three albums would you choose to wash up on the shore
Jamie XX’s In Colour, Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie & George Michael’s Greatest Hits, the boy’ll hate me for that last one, but he is my hero
What can audiences expect from a Love Malison live performance?
It’s high energy, it’s loud, but I hope most of all it’s fun – we work very hard to make the show as tight & professional as possible, but once the prep is done & the lights are down every show is really a party, & we’re always going out afterwards, of course everyone’s welcome
What are your plans for the rest of 2022?
Following our headline at the Camden Rocks All-Dayer at The Black Heart, we’ve got more shows to announce, but we’re in the studio recording the follow up which you should see around the end of summer, we’re busy boys!
