Casey Malanuk of Deep End Premieres First Single off Solo Project
A few years back, Charleston rock n roll band Stop Light Observations showed up at Mt. Pleasant’s Moultrie Middle School and played a pop-up show in the cafeteria. After they had finished playing, eighth grader Casey Malaunk approached the band and ended up talking to songwriter John-Keith Culbreth about how he was an aspiring local musician and had been recording in his room. John-Keith told Casey to send over some music, and Casey sent over a demo that he had recorded using just one microphone.
John Keith liked what he heard and offered to help Casey produce an EP for his band, which at the time was called The Shoelaces. After getting into the studio a few times The Shoelaces decided that if they wanted to take themselves seriously and actually produce music it was time to reinvent the band, so they changed their name to Deep End and came up with a more mature sound. This past year Deep End finally finished and released a their debut EP.
Deep End played a few shows out at Awendaw Green, and then this past April they won a battle of the bands and landed a spot at the top of the Cooper River Bridge during the bridge run. The main obstacle that Deep End has faced thus far is the fact that more than half of the band is under the age of eighteen, so gigs are hard to come by. When school let out this year, Casey decided to take a break from Deep End and cut out on his own for a little while, and for the past three months he has been recording a solo album in a little studio that he’s got set up in his bedroom.
Casey has an entire full length album worth of songs that he’s written over the past few years that didn’t sound anything like Deep End’s music, so he saved them for himself. The album will be a double-sided album that features two different versions of 12 songs, so 24 tracks in total. The A side is acoustic versions of all 12 songs, and the B side is all 12 of the same songs, in the same order, fully produced in studio quality.
“This record is the most personal and honest depiction of me as an artist and I am so proud to even be able to say that. In a generation where music streaming is thriving and more than half of the earth’s population has ADHD, it is very hard to get someone to listen to even five songs from the same artist. We are living in a time of playlists more than a time of records, so I created a record that simply is a playlist,” Casey says. Each song has a different style and genre, and so instead of creating a theme Casey decided to approach the album as if he were picking a handful of songs that he likes and putting them together. He felt that imposing a theme on the songs would take away from their meaning.
We’ve got the first single off Casey Malanuk’s solo debut premiering this morning. Casey plans to release a new single every two weeks until the entire album is released via singles. Each new single will be released along with the acoustic version of the prior single. Listen to “Reminiscity” below, and get ready for the next installment in about two weeks.