Musician Malloy James on His Paimio Sanatorium Artist Residency - COOL HUNTING® (2024)

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An artfully immersive, four-act, spatial-audio composition born within Alvar Aalto’s architectural marvel

David Graver

29 August 2024

In southwest Finland, roughly an hour-and-a-half drive from Helsinki, rises the historic Paimio Sanatorium, a modernist marvel designed by Finnish architectural pioneer and Artek founder Alvar Aalto circa 1929. Aalto envisioned the iconic structure—with its long lines, abundant windows and colorful accents—as a grand medical instrument itself. Enveloped by an evergreen forest, the sanatorium welcomed tuberculosis patients from 1933 until the 1960s. Today, this UNESCO World Heritage Site attracts tourists interested in the legacy of Aalto, people attending the inspiring Spirit of Paimio conference (this year dedicated to the power of togetherness), and individuals selected for a recently launched artist residency. Among the first round of artists who partook in the honor, Harlem-based recording artist Malloy James accomplished something unlike anyone else, tapping into the sanatorium’s soundscape to assemble an artfully immersive, spatial-audio composition.

It’s been a milestone year for James—who, in addition to his epic four-act piece for the Paimio residency, has so far released of one luscious, layered album (Something Died When You Left) and two dynamic, distinct EPs (San Leoandro and Golden Hour). For all of these bodies of work, James tapped into varied sonic influences and inspirations, as well as his formal training in sound engineering—which includes a master’s degree in music composition from Juilliard.

Paimio opened different creative doors than the time he spent in more traditional recording scenarios. “I had been all over Europe but I had never been to Finland,” James tells COOL HUNTING. “I knew it would be a new experience—but then I learned more about the sanatorium and Alvar Aalto, and his wife and business partner Aino, and what they did. It gave me context about what to expect—though, nothing could prepare me for what it felt like being there.”

Once on site, the architecturally significant space began to inform James’ process, which started with a synthesis of his observations. “Everything there has intention,” he says. “This influenced how I was able to create in the space. There are super-long corridors. The acoustics, and the way sound travels, it all contributed to how I felt when I started playing keys. By keeping windows open, or keeping doors open, it allowed the space to have a breathability. This had an interesting effect on the sound process. It was like nothing I’d experienced before.”

James settled into creative cycles over the course of three weeks. “At the very beginning it was hard to think about routine,” he says. “In the spring and summer, the sun stays up so long in Finland. The evenings are such an important part of the creative process for me normally. It was almost impossible for me to get the feeling of ‘evening’ at Paimio. At first I was scrambling, but after the sixth or seventh day, I had a regiment. I made sure I was in bed early and up early. Our studios open at 8AM. I would work there until 4 or 5 and play with as many different sounds as I could.”

James began by exploring synth and electronic soundscapes but then, through his interactions with the sanatorium, determined that classic instrumentation—including piano, cinematic percussion and strings—served the site-specific score best. Ultimately, Amongst The Trees was born along with its narrative four-act structure. “Every act is supposed to be a feeling or a point of view from somebody who would have been in the sanatorium—a patient, a nurse, a head physician, someone working on the grounds,” James says.

Amongst The Trees begins with birdsong and breathing. Throughout its duration, the elaborate soundscape turns jazzy then orchestral before dissolving into radio static. Then, it seems to expand into the celestial. Some moments are eerie and even a bit unsettling, others are deeply empowering. And yet all of it feels cohesive—one binaural experience that, through sound, helps listeners visualize life at Paimio. “Those birdsongs are actually sounds recorded from the sanatorium. Those birds were outside of my windows; some of them outside of the window at my studio, others outside of the window where I was staying,” he says. Ideally, he notes, all four acts should be listened to together, from start to finish, though every act could be appreciated on its own, out of context.

To listen to Amongst The Trees after Something Died When You Left, which was over a year in the making, demonstrates Malloy’s understanding and embrace of disparate genres. “I have a relationship to genre—sometimes,” he says. “I think that growing up in New York, there’s hip-hop and R&B, and even reggae and dancehall, as my mom is from the Caribbean. My father is from Harlem and he used to play a lot of jazz. Genre played the right role in my life early on, allowing me to differentiate between all of it and know what it meant. Then, the more that I started to learn instruments myself, the more genre felt constricting. So, I started playing around with all genres. I lose track of where I blend one genre into another—where psych-rock and funk end and hip-hop and pop-punk begin. It just all works out.”

“There is no cap to music. It doesn’t end,” James continues. “There is always something that can be made. There’s always a new sound out there. Music is sound waves and vibrations. You can take a piano key and play something and run it through something and augment it and run it through something else. This exploration to me is what I’m looking for. It’s an exploration of sound, to get as close as I can to what I hear inside myself. That’s why the Paimio piece is so liberating. I was able to do it my way—take orchestral and ambient and lush instrumentations and chords and put it all together in a way that I felt was right.”

Texturally, both San Leoandro and Golden Hour bring something different to James’ repertoire. It’s all due to his approach. “Golden Hour was a feelings piece. It was based solely off of a feeling. All of us, as artists, we make some things over the course of time, integrating feedback, listening to other people’s notes. But sometimes, we just have a moment where we feel something and we’ve got to put it down. That’s what Golden Hour was. I was in the middle of the woods by myself with my two dogs and watching rom-coms and reruns and skimming through Vogue magazine and I started to feel it.”

This year, James inked his first record deal. “I knew going into 2024 I wanted to ramp up everything,” he says. “I wanted my goals to feel more structured. One of them was getting a record deal. I knew that to do that I would have to find an approach that worked for me. Social media tends to be a good place to start. I had so much of a back catalog of music that I started making Instagram reels. I kept doing it and kept doing it. An A&R reached out and he said he liked what I was doing. He came across my stuff through Instagram. He liked that you couldn’t put my sound in one box.”

Though a residency at a sanatorium in rural Finland might sound unexpected for a Harlem-based recording artist, a quick glimpse at the track listings of James’ albums offers insight. A lot of his titles reference travel or international destinations. “Travel does something for my creative process,” he explains. “Sometimes when I travel, the music and the words and the chords just jump out of me. I don’t have to go searching. It finds me. Other places allow me to find those words in myself. Everything I’ve made has real feeling behind it. The stories are real. They are perspectives that I have lived or thought deeply about.” Fortunately, his process and his lived experience at Paimio birthed a piece of art that will allow others vivid access to a remote architectural wonder.

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