Available in radio rotation starting Friday 8 November for Feather Discs / TheOrchard, Demonstration of Affection (The Activist) is the new single from Malvaxtaken from their first album The journey doesn't bother mereleased last April 5th.
“Manifestation of affection (The activist)”, interview with Malvax
Hi guys, welcome to All Music Italia. How are you? How did you spend the summer and the last few months?
Hi everyone! First of all, thank you for giving us this space. We are fine and we are not exaggerating when we say that it is one of the most beautiful periods of our lives. We spent the summer traveling around in a van doing concerts from north to south, bringing our first album live, The journey doesn't bother meand we met so many new people to share our music with.
Obviously all summer tours, unfortunately, have an end. We ended the summer last Saturday atOFF Of Modena with several guests and with many people who came to listen to us. We still haven't fully digested what happened. There were really a lot of people, we were very excited.
Now, however, after 7 months, 32 concerts and 25 different cities, we are taking a few months off to work in the studio on our second album. We can't deny that we will miss this routine of playing on weekends a lot, but in 2025 we are ready to start again.
Show of affection (The activist) is the title of your new single. Can you tell us about its genesis?
Show of affection (The activist) it's a song that went through several steps before taking the shape it has today. The conceptual idea, however, was born suddenly in March in the studio Francesco Ferrari (keyboard player), who was sitting at the piano, and Jurij Cirone (bassist and author of the band), who had started writing lyrics that vaguely resemble what later became the lyrics of Show of affection (The activist).
When we write, we never all work together. We usually split into groups of two. In fact, when all four of us try to do something together, we practically always end up in a mess watching videos Aldo Giovanni And Jamesrather than focusing on our music.
After this first draft in the studio, all four of us focused on producing in the studio Yurij in Milan who, fortunately for us, is a producer and then, as a final step, we consulted Alexander (Domino Management) and we closed the text and then sang it.
It's strange to hear that a manager also knows how to write, but we have this luck and every now and then we exploit it.
What does activism mean for you in 2024?
Activism in 2024 means having something to say, a basic ideal, and trying to find a way to be heard. It's a bit like making music. You have to find a way to get what you write to the people out there.
Too often we stay silent for fear of annoying someone or for fear of not being listened to. Sure, a person who engages in activism in 2024 takes risks, but perhaps doing nothing is an even bigger risk.
We cannot say whether thiscivil disobedience“non-violent is the right way to solve certain problems, but what we know is that there are many problems that are not taken into consideration by those who govern us, because they are not considered important but superfluous.
Faced with climate change or other problems of this kind, we cannot stand by and watch, but we must do something, so that this also reaches those who should face these problems, including us citizens.
Is there a particular message that you would like to come across loud and clear with this song?
Yes there is and with the video perhaps you will understand it even better. The objective of this song is not to take sides on the right or left, above or below, but to take sides in favor of those who still have pure ideals, ideals that in 2024 are completely suffocated by an aesthetic search empty of any meaning. Activism, whether right or wrong for you, causes movement and certainly standing still is not a solution, it is not our solution.
If you could change something about our society, what would you choose to change? What, instead, would you like to preserve, protect?
There would be many things to change, perhaps too many, but certainly one of those that all four of us agree on is that linked to the musical context, which is increasingly flat and homogenised, made up of thousands of identical songs in which very few stand out. This dynamic does nothing but limit and cloud the listener's tastes, as well as lowering the threshold of diversity among artists who make music.
We have lost count of the times the music market has tried to tell us that we are too old, that we are not urban, that we are not “cool” and – frankly – we also get fed up, we close our ears and continue to do what we want.
You shouldn't be too negative either. In fact, there are also several things that should be preserved. Leaving the musical context for a moment, just to name one, our healthcare system today is still among the best in the world and, even in the face of continuous changes caused by privatisation, it still remains efficient.
The song is accompanied by a video clip that recalls the imagination of Monster's & Co. What was the idea that then gave life to this video?
We imagined a sort of “central command” which had as its objective to train an army of people with the task of countering all those who had a different idea from that of those who govern.
In Monster's & Co there is a parallel world of monsters who, in order to sustain their city on an energy level, scare children through portals, converting their screams into electricity.
In our video the visual reference to the cartoon is actually not very evident, but conceptually it helped us a lot to outline our idea.
In the video of Show of affection (The activist) the four of us are in fact trained by a central command to counter public riots.
Once the training is completed, we are then put into the field to stop the revolt but, just at the moment in which we should act, we realize that – in reality – our role is not to stop the protest, but to be part of it . So, we throw ourselves into the protest, we too take up the placards and become activists in every respect.
