Song Premiere: Nicholas Mallis, "Material Caging"

Over the past five years, Nicholas Mallis’ brand of weirdo pop and absurdist, over the top performances have been garnering him praise in Athens, Georgia, and beyond. He has shared bills with indie pop greats like Dan Deacon and Kishi Bashi and even played as a side man in the solo efforts of Athens legends Cindi Wilson and Fred Schneider (The B-52’s).

In 2019, Nicholas released Artificial Irrelevance, a collection of glam pop songs. After spending a year promoting and touring A.I., Nicholas has quickly turned out another album. The Final Station was recorded and produced by Nicholas at his home studio in Athens and mastered at The Glow by engineer/producer Jesse Mangum (Elf Power, Black Kids, Deep State). The new album will be out on spring 2020 via the Athens record label, Laser Brains.

Today, Ghettoblaster has the pleasure of premiering “Material Caging,” in which Mallis croons over bossa nova influenced synth pop. He had this to say about the track:

“I was listening to a ton of bossa nova last summer and trying to implement some of the genre’s progressions and rhythms into one of the tunes on the new album. The result ended up sounding more like the Bee Gees than João Gilberto, but it was fun stepping out and recording something way different than the other stuff we’ve done.”