What would an artist look like with no musical barriers whatsoever?
Oliver Malcom
This 20-year-old Swedish-born genius is a multi-instrumentalist with an electric voice to die for. After years of working behind the scenes, he’s now bursting out the gates on his own two feet. His productions are something wildly different and as you know, we don’t use ‘different’ very lightly here in the music industry.
We thought we’d take a look at this young talent’s Instagram profile to get a bit more of an idea of who he really is.
Human jukebox? That he is
Oliver is a free-spirited musical anarchist and he both knows it and owns it. It doesn’t seem he was taught to believe in structural boundaries. That, or he rebels them. If you’ve seen his three released productions to date, Helen, Switched Up or Kevin you will find yourself completely lost in his world, holding on throughout the sharp twists and turns of the visual and kinetic journey. You see, not only does Oliver use fluid genre-bend’s in his work, he also manipulates camera angles and cuts, fashion, facial expressions and movement like you’ve never seen before. Put a damn coin in this boy, let’s see what he can do.
All-about the untamed energy
Perhaps in-part it’s the energy of this youth, but my guess is that the musical force and rhythm inside of Oliver has him dripping in excess of excitable energy with each step he takes towards success. This post is about the ‘kids’ choir’ participation in his new song Kevin and it shows that he is full-steam excited about the tunes flowing from the recording room. I’ll have a double shot of Oliver Malcom and soymilk please.
A definite Joe Rogan fan
Ah so he’s been working on the new YouTube channel. Slight plug there. It also seems he’s a big fan of Joe Rogan podcasts. I’m not surprised. Oliver’s a perfect fit for the Rogan podcast fan persona: intellectual, assertive, inspired, creative, curious, and willing to be challenged. The video he’s posted is all of those things in just the short minute that it is. This video was what had me really warm to his personality. Behind the incomparable skillset, Oliver’s aura is infectious.
A creative in every way
Here we see the process in which Oliver made the suit he wore in his Helen video. Looks like the shirt doubled as his private journal as we see him sit there, entranced in thought, meaningfully lashing words and half-sentences onto the garment. If you look hard enough, you can spot some really deep quotes intertwined with vividly angry cursory. The first phrase I spotted was “We all evaporate so what are you scared of?” In a recent interview, Oliver explained Helen and its subsequent shirt was about a “couple of girls he’s met in his life smushed into one song. Not lovey-dovey romance stuff, but something that has meaning to me. But I don’t like to speak about what the songs are about, because part of what I love about music is that you can interpret it in a way that relates to you best.”
In control of his work
This is a behind the scenes clip on the Helen video production. We see a small cut of him directing the next scene, knowing exactly what he’d like to be shot, the movement, the timing and the placement. It’s all go-go-go with this young artist and very clearly displays he’s not one to sit around waiting to be told what to do. From the outside-in, it definitely looks like Oliver Malcom is at the driver’s seat of this journey. Refreshingly, he’s not driven not by flex or fame, instead, he creates for the idea that “music is therapy”.
SEE MORE: Ones To Watch: Oliver Malcom
