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Hi Malenka, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?
Good, thanks, how are you?
Can you talk to us more about your latest single “Pain Makes You Present”?
It’s my very first single, from my debut EP, ‘Creature of Devotion’, coming soon!
It’s a song about heartbreak and how emotional pain can actually propel you towards good things.
I mostly write sad songs but I like to think all of them have a little bit of hope, and the same thing is true about ‘Pain Makes You Present’.
Did any event in particular inspire you to write this song?
Yes, a particularly painful breakup, the kind that makes it difficult to function. But it wasn’t just the heartbreak that was an issue – I was feeling horribly lost, living in a dingy room in an over-crowded London flat share, my music career was non-existent, and I didn’t have much direction in life. Until my heart was broken, I kind of…just kept going with it. I didn’t notice how dissatisfied I was with my life. Then the pain of the breakup suddenly made everything clear – I had to make a change, I wasn’t happy. Hence ‘pain makes you present’.
How was the filming process and experience behind the video?
To be honest, I was quite nervous, as it was my first time ever behind a camera. I arrived on set – a very cool apartment in East London – unsure of how the two days of filming would go. But I ended up really enjoying it, in no small part thanks to how lovely everyone from Little Windmill (the production company) was.
The video is about me becoming obsessed with winning a prize offered by a cornflake company, eating through endless cereal boxes, hoping one will contain the “golden ticket”. There’s half-empty cereal bowls on the floor, on the bookshelves, flooding out of the sink.
There were scenes where I had to stuff my face with cereal, take after take, after take. Not sure I can eat them anymore!
How was the recording and writing process?
The writing process was unusually swift for me. I normally take months to finish a song – I like to take my time to process the emotions I’m writing about. But writing “Pain Makes You Present” was more like an emotional purge, so the song was finished within three or four short writing sessions, lyrics scribbled down while working behind the bar on the Bermondsey Beer Mile.
The recording of the song was a very intimate process. It was just me and sound engineer/producer Matt Keightley sitting in the studio and playing around with different arrangement and harmonies, we called it ‘enhanced acoustic’ – the arrangement centres around my voice and guitar but is elevated by some bass, synth a little bit of piano.
What role does London play in your music?
It’s the backdrop for everything.
It is very easy to feel lost and lonely in London, and the grey evening streets of the city are one of the main images I saw in my head while writing ‘Pain Makes You Present’.
But London also feels so full of opportunity, you never know what will happen, twenty fours hours a day. It’s as exciting as it is scary, and that mystery definitely inspires creativity.
Does the new single mean we can expect more new material – how’s that coming along?
Yes! There’s three more songs from this EP and there will definitely be more. It’s all recorded and will be out soon.
Any tentative release date or title in mind?
I actually just released a new single on Valentine’s Day! It’s called “Rainbow Song” and it’s – of course – a love song, with a witchy, mystical vibe and sting in the tail!
It was written to make sense of a turbulent relationship, not knowing whether staying in the relationship made sense. I finally realised I can’t predict the future, the best I can do is live with hope that it will all work out in the end.
What else is happening next in Malenka’s world?
I’m thinking about the next project, I have a tonne of my own songs to record, and then I’m also posting little covers of songs I love on my socials.
I’m always writing more songs – these days I’m trying to write something happier, rather than making all my songs so melancholy… but for some reason the sad songs still come easier. So, there are definitely more sad songs coming, but always with that little bit of hope in them.
And gigs in London, there’s something very special and intimate about being able to sing directly to people, so I’m looking forward to that.
