Artist Q/A (July 2025)

Malifora (Drone Musician) : Part Two

Q: What is the most violent sound you’ve ever created, and what made you want to make it?

A: That’s a very interesting question. I think Eminence is the darkest sound I’ve created, but I don’t know that I would say it sounds violent. I think some of the riffs on Your Coffin Buried in the Swamp are the most crushing I’ve ever made. When I sit down to make a new track, I’ll have a sort of mental vision board of ideas I want to capture. Violence is not something I ever consider when I’m in that phase of the process, but I can certainly see why a listener might associate that word with my sound. I usually use words like cold or crushing. My concept for Dark Rose Two was to get a lonely sound. Certain parts I wanted to sound cold and others I wanted to sound almost humid. I think to some degree I accomplished what I set out to. 

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Q: Do you see drone/noise as a release, or a form of rebellion? How does that shape the way you make your music?

A: I definitely use creativity as a release. Rebellion, not so much. I’m not trying to be counterculture or anything like that. It just so happens that I’m inspired by things that are a little more esoteric. My approach to making music is not dissimilar to painting. I’ll come up with a basic riff and then color it with pedals and fill in the blank spaces with ambience. 

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Q: Drone/noise is often described as chaotic, yet there’s control in making music. How do you avoid losing yourself in chaos with the discipline of shaping it into art?

A: Fortunately with such free form music the shaping isn’t much of a challenge. It’s largely just technical barriers figuring out how to get the sound in my head to come out of the speakers. I work with a mix of analog and digital gear and learning how to use everything is what requires the most discipline. The gear is what you use to channel the chaos into music. 

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Q: How do you respond to critics who dismiss your style as "not music"? Does their rejection fuel you, or is it irrelevant?

A: It just feels like a lack of engagement. Part of the musicality of noise comes when you really focus your brain on listening. You’ll start to pick out certain sounds and notice how they overlap. You find the music when you look for it. However, I do think the majority of people will not connect with the music I make and that’s okay. 

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Q: Drone/noise often rejects conventional beauty. Is there something you find beautiful in the sound, and how do you define that beauty?

A: I don’t find all noise/drone/ambient music beautiful. Nor do I really want to make anything that sounds beautiful. I don’t really know why I want to hear the sounds I do. I just know I’m in the right place when I hit a note and get a grimace on my face because of how thick it sounds. But much like in my previous answer, I think beauty is there if you look for it. I think you get out of it what you put into it. 

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Q: Obviously it does not particularly matter, but do you ever see a world where noise or a form of it goes mainstream?

I think the closest we ever got was krautrock in the 70’s, but even then it wasn’t truly mainstream. I think it's a little too artsy fartsy to go mainstream. You have to be nerdy in a lot of very specific ways to find this genre and I just don’t see a world where that happens en masse. Or that it would be a world you want to live in. 

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Q: If you could capture field recordings of a force of nature—say, a hurricane, a wildfire, or an earthquake—how would you integrate its sound into a song and in what capacity?

I’ve tried to use hurricane winds before. Haven’t quite got it to where I want but I’m still exploring. I like using field recordings as a way to expand the sonic texture of a track. Most of my work is centered around one mono guitar track so having something like wind or air in the background gives it more life.