Releasing today, 17th May, Malvina’s debut album Mercedes has revved into action. She’s a label-mate of Savages, on Paris-based Pop Noire, so understandably this alt-pop innovator has a punk edge. Malvina adeptly melds the genre with hyperpop and techno. The album itself was composed through techno improvisations in a BDSM club, confronting societal norms and personal relationships of the artist who situates herself as a dom.
Malvina is a pole dancer and orchestra conductor too; she holds plural identities. A universal theme across alt-pop music at the moment is holding supposed contradictions together: like the exploration of queerness on Lynks’ album Abomination. In Malvina’s case, rather than queerness it’s the BDSM world that Mercedes explores, which is also the artist’s domina [dominatrix] name and middle name. This name is taken from her great great grandmother, whose embroidered handkerchief features on the album cover delicately veiling the musician’s face. It’s another gentle tension that pulls at the seams of what is quote unquote acceptable – perhaps nodding at the generational shift in how kink communities are viewed in wider society.
Today’s lead track Sorry not Sorry takes the tempo down and the mood to something more introspective than Malvina’s BRAT, her most popular song on the album. Quasi-choral, with puritanical sounding chords resounding underneath the artist’s discussion of an intimate sub-dom relationship this perceived tension between the divine and the corporeal is interrogated. It's a popular song title also shared by Demi Lovato, Tyler, The Creator and Freak Slug, with multiple interpretations – but all these roads lead to an empowered position for the artist.
In Malvina’s video for Sorry not Sorry she stands bare as she delivers “I want you to feel helpless, beg for forgiveness” with cuts to the symbolically-charged handkerchief floating through the air. Confident to speak her truth and assert non-judgmental sexuality Malvina has created a bold piece of work that explores her relationship with men.