Today I’m so excited to share with everyone the latest single from NYC-based artist, Malick Koly, called “Eaux Rouges.” The song comes from his recently announced EP, Feel Bad Fest, that will be released everywhere music is sold on August 18th. I was also able to catch up with Malick Koly for a brief interview below.
If you could best describe Feel Bad Fest in a few words, how would you do so?
Feel Bad Fest to me is closure. It is a dream state woven into a story, and the overarching themes are resilience and forward motion. Each song is a positive response to a nightmare or a series of unfortunate events I may have experienced in a specific period of time. And this project is the closure of each event chronologically.
As this is your first EP of this nature, conceptually and sonically, where did you derive inspiration from? And how can those influences be seen in this new track, “Eaux Rouges?”
Well both of my first releases were acoustic, I truly wanted to lean towards my pen, as the respective themes of the songs “Dolòr” and “Heaven for Now” called for that quiet storm, the grunge folk energy in me. “Eaux Rouges” on the other hand, is a story about a one night stand, and the abandonment felt right after, to me that feels electric, to me that feels drumming and screaming it away. And that’s the static electricity that drives this new ones.
You collaborated with Steve Jordan on this EP, as well. How did that partnership come about and what lessons did you learn along the way while working on this project together?
Steve is a mentor of mine, he gave a lot of sonic guidance, direction and refinement. Given that a lot of my artistic development was done in a live setting, shaping my recording sound was something very important at this junction of my career, and Steve was gracious enough to believe in me and participate in shaping what’s come, and I’m truly grateful that this collaboration could take place at such a special time for me.