If you haven’t yet heard of Mallavora already, you would have done soon enough without reading this. The Bristol-based powerhouse alt-metal band have been on nothing but a steep upward trajectory over the last couple of years, and leading them from the front is their brilliant vocalist, and accessibility advocate, Jessica Douek. The importance of inclusivity in music is incredibly high, not only to Jess, but to the band overall, and this is something that we discuss quite a bit in this conversation. It’s without a doubt that I say you will take something away from this conversation that will in turn make you think a little more about the inclusivity of the spaces you’re in, but also with this is a huge respect for the determination that comes from the band on doing what’s right for them and their fans, and not being afraid to speak out on such important matters through their music. Enjoy.

Could you firstly give us a little introduction as to who you are and what you do?

So I'm Jess. I'm the vocalist of Mallavora, a metal band from Bristol, UK, but I am also an accessibility consultant, specialising in music and live events, funnily enough.

How did you come about doing that?

I was really interested in the topic of accessibility in music as it means a lot to me personally, so I went and got some proper training in it. I've basically got involved with Attitude is Everything, which is a charity working to improve things for disabled people in music, and I've got involved with them and sort of learned that accessibility consultancy was a thing that you could do. Got some training and started doing that properly, like started doing that as my sort of occupation formally, about 18 months ago. So now I work with some major festivals, and I do strategic and creative consultancy to make all sorts of organisations in the industry more accessible. I absolutely love it.

When did you start on your music journey?

Oh, I've been playing music or been involved in music since I was probably eight years old. That's when I started playing piano and shortly after that I started singing. So music has been a part of my life as like a performer or a musician specifically sort of since then, but I grew up around so much music. My uncle's a musician, my grandparents were musicians. So on my dad's side, it was like a big part of my life growing up. So yeah, always had some sort of involvement. I grew up in a musical family, on dad's side at least.

Did your grandparents play in live bands?

Yeah. So my Dad's Mum was an opera singer, and my Dad's Dad was a violinist in Finchley Orchestra in London. So yeah, they were sort of classically trained musicians.

Did you ever see them perform?

I think I might've missed their prime, to be honest. I definitely saw my Nonna, my Grandma performing, singing. She used to do a lot of singing, and my Dad has a beautiful voice. My uncle fronts a band himself. So he does like sort of rock and roll covers. Sort of like a bit of Elvis and that kind of stuff. Lots of like ‘60s rock and roll is what my Uncle's band is all about. So I've seen him and his band a few times. It's cool.

It's nice that you've grown up within the music. How long have you been with Mallavora?

I joined Mallavora in 2019. Ellis and Larry had been playing together for a couple of years before I joined but yeah, I've been doing it since then. I joined kind of in Summer 2019 and then around six months later we had COVID, so I didn't get too much experience, I guess, in that initial couple of years really. So it sort of felt like 2022 when things started to open up again was when we really got started properly as the band you know it as today. Then Sam, our drummer, joined us at the beginning of 2025. So she's not been with us too long, but it just feels like she's been with us forever.

You’ve got a really powerful voice, both the melodic and more aggressive screaming. Did you have any formal training yourself in either?

I've never had any training or vocal lessons, to be honest. The only like formal musical training I've had was piano. I had piano lessons for many years, and always wanted singing lessons, but my parents felt piano was enough to be spending on lessons. So no, I'm self-taught, I guess you'd say. I've only been screaming for a couple of years. I'm trying to think when I started - it must have been 2022, maybe the end of 2021, when I first started learning how to scream, but again, self-taught. I do really want to get a vocal coach at some point though because it's not so much like about learning how to do something, it’s more like making sure my technique is healthy and like ensuring the sustainability of my voice.

Jess Douek - Mallavora, 2025 **© Alia Thomas,** please do not use without permission.

I can imagine the screaming does potentially take a toll on the vocals, and in that sense technique must be very important?

Yeah, technique is really important to be honest. It's important with the clean melodic stuff as well as the screaming, but I mean the screaming doesn't hurt to do at all. It's because it's like a less experienced muscle, I guess that I'm using. It's not as strong as my clean singing muscle. I don't even know. This is how little I understand the vocal cord system because I don't even know what's going on in there haha but it uses a different part of the voice, but my clean vocals, well, I'm just really used to it and I've like developed a way of doing it in a strong and healthy way. That being said, I still actually want to see a coach and make sure I am doing it properly, but yeah, particularly with the screaming, I know I'm not doing harm to my voice, but I want to make sure that I can do it for a long time, basically.

Of course. Your songs seem to touch upon quite important matters. In older songs you’ve written around climate change and the impact on the environment, and listening to other songs of yours, some of the lyrics feel that they have quite an important personal connection in terms of your health. Are these experiences something that inspires your writing and music?

I've definitely always written about personal issues because I found writing music to be a bit of an outlet for stuff that I might be dealing with personally, which is I think quite common. I tend to find that it's more authentic if you're writing about something that you know and understand. I think maybe in the earlier days I was doing a little bit more of like outward commentary, which is cool and it's good, but I think the really powerful stuff is like actually when you look inward and explore that side of things. In most recent years, me and our guitarist, Larry have had a really good thing going with the way that we songwrite for Mallavora. Like our personal health situations, living with disability, chronic illness, and being neurodivergent as well… All of that experience and everything that brings up. Larry's really good at being able to translate that into instrumentals, and capture a particular mood or feeling of whether it's like grief when he became ill or whether it's like frustration at the things he's not able to do or whether it's, you know, anger at being misunderstood by the world or the barriers that we're facing. All of that stuff.

He's so good at like capturing that, bottling it and putting it into like guitar music basically, and then he'll hand it over to me and we'll have a kind of creative dialogue about what was going on for him when he wrote it, what the intent is behind it. Then I bring my personal experience into it, and so it can take a different turn when I get handed a project and add all the vocals. But also sometimes, what's been really powerful is, in our currently unreleased stuff, when we're basically writing the same intent in both the vocals and the instrumentals. So it's like, if you were to mute one or the other, they're still both saying the same thing, and that makes for something really quite powerful. So yeah, that's like our process.

I appreciate you have some health conditions including Fibromyalgia. How has that affected your experience within music, not just as an artist, but as a music fan as well?

Yeah I have a number of chronic illnesses and I'm also autistic but fibromyalgia is, I suppose like the big one, I guess, that's had a big impact. I was diagnosed when I was 18. 2017 is when I was diagnosed, and I went on a pretty long journey of quite a lot of denial for quite a few years of like how much of an impact it was having on me, and took a bit of time to sort of accept it and come to terms with what it means to be a disabled person, you know and the barriers that I was facing in the world. And to answer your question the effects as both like a gig-goer and a performer, and an artist, and also now someone working professionally in the industry as well…

I've definitely found things really challenging. I think certainly as a gig goer, this sort of silent expectation is that you go to a gig and you stand and watch. For me that's just not really possible or certainly not possible without quite big repercussions afterwards. I just spent a long time thinking, why am I not like everyone else? Why can everyone else just stand and watch a gig, and I am struggling so much? I'm in so much pain or I'm so exhausted afterwards. You know, I felt so different for a really long time, felt really like isolated, I guess. Then it was kind of like learning about the disabled community and like learning about also your legal rights as a disabled person and what you're entitled to, and the possibility that you can actually ask for adjustments and accommodations and you can like ask for things to be different. It kind of opened my eyes to realising I don't have to just fit into a mould of what everyone else is doing.

Don't get me wrong, it's taken a long time to like reach that. I guess, like a level of compassion for myself because I’ve definitely, definitely felt a lot of pressure to, particularly as an artist, just be able to do what everyone else is doing. Just get on with it kind of thing, and if you can't do it, the kind of attitude is like, maybe it's not for you. But actually trying to look at it from a perspective of, ‘well, I can do it differently then’. Or we'll have to find a way that it's going to work. So I won't accept the attitude of, “if you can't do it the way that everyone else is doing it, then you can't do it at all.” I just think it's an outdated way of looking at it, and it makes the disabled person the problem rather than putting the focus on removing barriers that make it hard for the disabled person to engage and participate in stuff. I think outside of music, I've had to stop quite a few things. My world became quite small. I wasn't able to do a lot of the stuff that I used to love, but when it came down to music and performing, I wasn’t willing to give it up. You know, this is a red line for me. I'm not going to stop doing this. So, I've got to figure out a way that it's going to work for me, and at the moment, this sort of like mold again, of which artists are kind of expected to fit into really doesn't work for me, and it doesn't work for Larry. To be honest, it doesn't work for a lot of us. I think a lot of artists struggle with the expectations that are put on them. It's like that one size fits all approach really doesn't work very well. So it's all about firstly trying to raise awareness that things need to be looked at a bit differently, and then also actually trying to forge a path for ourselves as musicians in the industry, trying to like, you know, metaphorically hack away the branches in the forest, and trying to properly carve a way through it.

That’s a brilliant mindset, and I love that you're now putting this into action within your gigs, for making them more accessible, not only for yourself, but for your audiences as well. For those who haven’t been to a Mallavora show before, could you explain more about how you do this?

Yeah, sure. What happened was, the first song that I wrote about being disabled went viral on TikTok, and reached thousands of disabled people around the world. It was also really the first time we had fans to be honest. Before then we were like really, really tiny, but then suddenly we had an audience and there was a lot of disabled people within our audience. So naturally, we were like wanting our fan base to be able to come and see us live, and we were very quickly realising that as like a grassroots band coming up through the industry, you know you begin by playing the small local venues, and none of these are very accessible. Like all the great small local venues that bands play when they're first starting out. It’s such an important part of the scene. A lot of them are like in basements, down flight of stairs, or they're in an attic of a bar up a flight of stairs, or they're just like little dingy rooms that have been turned into a live space, but are certainly not made with accessibility in mind. So when we were looking at doing our first kind of headline shows, we were like, well, hang on a sec, how are we going to do this where like wheelchair users can come? Or disabled people more broadly? We started to realise that it was actually a really big problem that disabled people were physically being excluded from live music at the grassroots level, and we found that quite shocking. Obviously from our own lived experience as disabled gig goers and struggling with gigs in that way, then our experience as disabled artists wanting to make sure our gigs are accessible for us, and then having an audience that had barriers to being able to access live music, we were like, wow, okay, it's really important that we try and work something out here. Just like the concept of our biggest fans not being able to even get in the door to see us live was just so stupid to us. Firstly, it's stupid, because your fans need to be able to see you live… it doesn't make good business sense, but also, we just found the concept of putting on a gig where we knew some people could not get in, we found that kind of unacceptable. We just aren't okay with that. So we kind of said, you know, when we're in control of what the venues are - so that's really when you headline your own gigs as that's when you pick the venues because when you're supporting another band or you're on a festival, the venue has been decided and you don't have any real say in that… But for our own headline shows we thought we've got control, so we can pick the venue.

So we started looking, wondering are there any small venues that are wheelchair accessible? It’s harder than you think! You can probably imagine that actually - it's hard to find small venues that at the size that we were when we started doing this, could realistically like, sell tickets in, that would also be accessible for our audience. So it was really massively restricting the types of rooms we were able to play, but that's what we're willing to do. It's really important to us, so it sort of started there, and it's become a lot bigger. Now we're looking at such a range of things, like at our last London headline show we had a British Sign Language interpreter for the first time, that we hired and brought in ourselves. We make sure we don't use strobe lighting during our sets, so people with epilepsy and other light-sensitivities can actually come. We try and make a quiet space available at the venue if they have that extra room, for neurodivergent people, and we have lyrics sheets so that deaf or hard of hearing people can at least have access to the lyrics, which we've had really good feedback on. It's kind of DIY and it's not a replacement for having an interpreter at all, but a lot of people with auditory processing issues and all sorts of other things find it useful to be able to read the lyrics. So then it's just like growing from there. Now we will quite often have a break in our headline set, and that is so that we can rest in between sets, but also so our audience can like, chill for a bit and be ready to go for the second half. We've had good feedback on that, and we make sure that we have actual seated areas that aren't at the back or shoved off to the side, where you can't really see anything. We really make sure that people who need to be seated have a good view of the stage. So both on and off stage there's like so much that we think about now. We want to do more and more as we grow, but it's interesting how much you can actually do for like, no cost. You can do a lot without having to spend anything, so we just sort of want to shout about it and try and get more people to copy us basically. We want more bands and promoters and booking agents, and the whole industry to start thinking about this stuff from the grassroots level up.

Especially if you're saying these changes are coming at very little cost, if any, it seems surprising that some of these things aren't more commonly seen. Do you feel that large scale music events like festivals are improving with accommodating more for people with accessibility requirements or further needs?

Yes, I do feel like things are improving. I think awareness has increased massively. I think like the pandemic did something there where, there's like a ‘before COVID’ and an ‘after COVID’. Before COVID, I think a lot of disabled people maybe didn't really realise that they could ask for adjustments, and then we had a pandemic where suddenly everyone was working from home and things were done online and adjustments were made. Coming out of that, I think there's been increased awareness that people have different needs and I think within the disabled community as well, people have felt more entitled to speak up and feel they can say something because they need something different to happen here. So the industry is definitely playing the catch up game a little bit. Like the industry has been pretty overwhelmed, I'd say with the really increased demand for accessible facilities, accessible provisions, and like all sorts of things. So yeah, I think things are improving, but I think to be honest, there's a lot of work that still needs to be done, so that the industry shouldn’t see it so much as an afterthought or something that's like a pain in the backside that they need to deal with, and more like a priority that is the right thing to do. This makes good business sense. It also benefits everyone when you make things generally more accessible. I think there still needs to be a big mindset change and a big attitude change, but we're heading in the right direction.

That's good to hear. I’ve noticed in your photos and music videos, that you’re often with your walking stick. Is it a conscious decision that you make a point of including it?

That's a great question… Yes, and no haha. It took me a long time to first realise that I actually needed mobility aids. That was a really big internal process that I went through, because there's a lot of kind of shame and stigma about mobility aids, and the kind of assumptions that are made as a result about you, particularly as like a young person using something like a walking stick… it does open you up to a lot of intrusive questions. You wouldn't believe the sort of comments I've had since using it! So it took me a long time, firstly to accept that I needed the help of a mobility aid and to realise that was okay, and then to start to feel able to like, leave the house with them and start being public and being brave enough to do that took time. It was then another step further to start thinking about, do I want to hide this in the context of the band? Or do I want to be visible with it? And the thing is, I knew that as soon as I took photos with it, or used it in a music video, or used it on stage, that it would be seen as a statement, even if I wasn't trying to make a statement. People see that and they go, “Oh, what's that about?” But really, I actually do need it sometimes. I need it sometimes, so it would be silly to not use it out of shame of what that might bring, but I was very aware of the fact that it would bring attention and it would be seen as a statement.

I kind of had to prepare myself a little bit for that mentally. In the end I just sort of decided to just go for it, to just do a photo shoot with it, and the response has been pretty cool actually. Like, being so visible with it, also on stage and like talking about it, using it and having it in music videos and stuff, you know, people have said to us that it's made them feel more able to use aids, like taking away their shame about having to use a walking stick - if you see someone else doing it, then you don't feel so weird or different or alone. So that's had like a really big impact. Equally, I have had to field a lot of like, uncomfortable questions. A lot of really nosy, intrusive comments and stuff from people that I don't know, which has been challenging, but my confidence has grown with time. I think also I was aware that as soon as I start using it, and I'm visible with it, if I then don't use it for any particular reason, people will think either that I am “cured” or that I was faking it. So I was really worried about that, and actually, for a little while after I first started being visible with it with the band, I felt a little bit like I couldn't let go of it. Because I didn't want people to be like, “Oh, you're not using it now?” and unfortunately that was the case because as soon as I wasn't using it for anything, people would be like, “Oh, great, you're doing so much better!” I'd have to tell them actually that I was still just as disabled. I just don't need it every day or all the time, and I found that really difficult. And again, it was like a journey of confidence and feeling self assured with it. Now I feel like I'm more in a place where, like on stage, I will pick it up and use it for a bit, and then I'll put it down and won't use it for a bit, an that’s ok. People can think whatever they want. People can say whatever they want, but I know what I've got going on. I know, I'm confident in myself and my reasons for what I'm doing, and I don't have to explain myself to anyone. So yeah, it's been a process.

I can imagine. So last year was quite a big year for Mallavora. You had lots of stuff going on including the fact that you won the Kerrang! Radio's The Deal, and you were signed by Marshall Records! How was all of that experience for you?

Amazing. It was wicked. Like you know, the competition really changed things for us. Firstly, like hundreds and hundreds of people voted for us to get into the final, which was just incredible. We just couldn't believe how much support we got and it really made us feel like, you know, we're onto something here. People believe in us. We should believe in ourselves, like people want this, people want this to succeed, and that gave us a big boost. And then to actually have like 10 kind of industry heavyweights, like unanimously vote for us to win. That opportunity was again, absolutely huge for us. It was exactly what we needed, so we felt for a long time that we were kind of locked out of that industry circle. Didn't really know how to get in. Didn't have a huge network really when we started. So we felt a little bit on the outside, whereas that competition kind of like actually brought us in for the first time and it has been a game changer for sure. Just like in terms of the eyes that are on us, like the way that we're getting taken more seriously, but also like the support that we've been able to access from it. So it's been really good.

And you worked with Mikey Demus from Skindred which must have been quite the experience?!

Yeah, I know. We love Skindred so much. Larry, our guitarist had seen them like 10 times. We were completely taken aback because we were talking to Marshall about going into the studio to record the EP and they basically turned around to us and was like, “Mikey Demus from Skindred wants to produce the record. What do you think?” What do we think? Silly question. Are you joking? We couldn't believe our ears really. We were just so buzzing to work with him because he's like an absolute hero. So yeah we worked with Mikey. He's so brilliant. We had such a good time, and he added his little bits of magic onto that EP for sure, so that was also very surreal. It was super surreal. Just like recording an EP and like the state of the art facility, like Marshall studios, this brand new, like multimillion pound studio. They had some of these absolutely priceless things there, like George Michael's piano was there, because of course it was, you know. There was a vintage desk which had recorded the Rolling Stones, it was wild. It was absolutely wild. So yeah, an incredible experience getting to do an EP there with Mikey as the producer. Proper like stuff of dreams, you know?

Do you feel like you learned a lot from working with him?

Yeah, definitely. He has so much experience in the industry. He really knows his stuff and it also pushed us and challenged us as well to like bring someone else in externally and also to have a label on board for the first time who then also had their own opinions on things. We'd never had that before. It had always just been the four of us making all the decisions but suddenly there were external people who cared about it, which was amazing, but they also had their views and their opinions. It was a learning process for us to be working with people on something that's like your baby basically, and something that previously had only ever been up to us. Suddenly we had a record label being like, we want to make sure this happens, and you know, a producerwho was like, I want to add this. So yes, we've learned so much about. About what it means to actually progress, I suppose, because progressing in the industry does mean naturally that you're going to have stakeholders. So that was really, really valuable to learn how to navigate that basically.

And then this year, you were part of the first Sober Metal Night in Bristol. How was the gig first of all, and did it feel different in any way to your “regular” gig?

Good question. So we were approached by Bristol Sober Spaces, which is a charity as part of Bristol Drugs Project. They do amazing work with people dealing with like drug and alcohol addiction, basically, and they put on sober events and like sober nights. They approached us and said they wanted to do a Sober Metal Night and wanted us to headline it, and we just loved that - we loved what they were doing. And, you know, we're all about trying to make our gigs welcoming for absolutely everyone. We don't want anyone to feel excluded at our shows, so it just made sense, the partnership really made sense. And we just thought, you know, it's not something that we have particular lived experience of, although our guitarist is sober due to his health. So there is that element of it, I guess, but it was just more something that we felt was really aligned with our values, and we were curious to be part of it, like it's a bit of an experiment. Is there a market for this? We didn't know.

And do you think there is?

Hell yeah, the gig was full. It was, it was absolutely packed, and in terms of your question, you know, did it feel any different? No, I wouldn't say it did, to be honest. Well, certainly not for us as performers. There was still mosh pits - the audience didn't act any differently, but we had really good feedback from people afterwards, you know, particularly for people who are sober and feel like they can't really go to gigs because there's a lot of alcohol thrown around. As a result, they don't feel super comfortable going to live music. So it was so nice to hear from those people for the first time who felt comfortable coming, but also to hear from people who aren't necessarily sober, but were curious to just go and see what it would be like, and the feedback was that it was actually really nice. It was really cool to be in an environment when, you know, people aren't completely smashed. I think people just sort of said that generally, it felt quite a bit safer than normal. No less energetic, which is cool, because we were a little bit like, unsure, you know, how that was gonna play out? But no, it was a big success. I think they want to do another one at some point, which is really good to hear.

I guess there's still a certain stigma about people and situations when there’s no alcohol involved - there's a pressure in certain environments. So it's great to hear that it was just like any other gig, alcohol or not.

Yeah, you know, just because you don't have a drink in your hand or whatever doesn't mean you're not gonna go crazy. We really liked that their sober events are for anyone, whether you drink or not. They’re just normal gigs, but they just so happen to not be selling alcohol there. I think that's really cool, and just like normalising that a little bit more and proving that the gig was really good. There just so happens to not be any alcohol on sale. We were quite proud to be part of that.

And so you should be. Now, if you’re happy to share on it, you mentioned earlier that a few of you in the band are neurodivergent. Has that brought its own challenges in what you do?

Yeah I’d say so. I am recently diagnosed as autistic, like, really recently. I got diagnosed in March.

That is very recent - is this something you’re still coming to terms with?

I'm definitely still processing it, but equally, in the couple of months, since my diagnosis, I'm feeling a lot more accepting of it now, I think, than initially. I found it quite difficult to come to terms with, around being sort of late diagnosed, feeling quite a lot of grief, I guess, for my younger self and the ways I was treated in certain situations, like the challenges that I had growing up and in the workplace, at school, socially, in so many different ways. And that not being picked up until like, a couple years ago of me suddenly thinking like, hang on a sec, what if I'm autistic, and went down that process. So then to actually get the diagnosis was a bit like “whoa, oh my gosh”, because I think it's one thing to think that maybe I'm autistic, but it's another thing to actually be told you're autistic, and that you’re this different person. Your brain works differently, and it's going to impact everything in good ways and challenging ways, but you know, I think it's teaching me to have more compassion for myself. I'm slowly getting more self assured, I guess, and slowly feeling more able to like, speak up about the things that I struggle with, or things that I may need to be done differently in the workplace, or just sort of trying to listen to myself a bit more, because, we call it internalised ableism but it's like that thing of, you should just be able to do what everyone else can do. But it's actually realising now that I am different and trying to force myself to be like everyone else is going to make me ill. But also Sam, our drummer has ADHD. Larry, our guitarist is also neurodivergent, as of yet undiagnosed, but it's something that affects most of us. We do see it as a real strength with the music, because we hyper focus haha. We definitely fixate as well, but that lends itself so well to making complex, intricate, considered music that's like really thought out. So we definitely see it as a big strength. At the same time, like gigs and the touring experience and even the studio experience can be overwhelming and overstimulating. There's lots of different noises, lots of different inputs. Yeah, lots going on. So just trying to, again, have compassion for ourselves and allow ourselves quiet space, because it's one thing to offer a quiet space for your audience, but then it's also practicing what we preach, you know? So we need to look after ourselves. We need like quiet time, we need time to decompress. So we're all quite introverted in our own ways, so struggling with like social interaction and things and just needing downtime. Just trying to give ourselves permission to do that, and not be ‘on’ all the time. It's a really important part of making sure we can do this sustainably, and not burning out, basically.

As you mentioned tours, how do you find the tour experience? Have you been able to adapt to touring well with the certain things that you need to accommodate for yourself like the quiet time for example?

We've done a bit of touring, but we're yet to do a big, big tour. We're yet to do our first like, you know, multiple weeks on the road thing. We're really excited about it. We know it's coming soon, and we're desperate to do it. A big part of that is going to be figuring out how to do that in a way that's not going to be really exhausting, because again, just going back to talking about the sort of expectations or the like silent, unwritten rules of things is like the way that tour is in the industry. You like sleep really rough, people sleep on the floor of vans or people sleep on sofas and they have a bit of a rough time, and that's just part of it, man. Rock and roll. But actually, well, that's not possible for us. Or yeah, we could do that once and then we'd have to quit. I'm not about that. We're not about that. We want to do this for a long time, you know we want to be able to actually have a sustainable career. We don't want to burn ourselves into the ground. So watch this space. We'll figure it out. It's exciting, you know, the prospect of obviously going on on that big tour whenever that may be.

So on that note, what is next for Mallavora? What can we expect from you in the near future?

So much, oh my gosh, things are really exciting right now. We're currently in the studio recording our debut album. So, yeah, we've, you know, written our debut album, which we are so, so proud of. It's like nothing else you've ever heard from us, we're so excited. We cannot wait to start releasing it. We're releasing a single on 10th September called “Smile”, and that song is like full of disabled rage. It is so heavy and so brutal and like, so angry. I think people are just going to be like, whoa. We're coming out like punching really hard. We want to make a huge impact with the first release, and we’re working with a label, working with an agent, working with a manager, like there's so much going on. So things are going to get really, really busy. We're really excited. We've got a really busy festival season coming up. We're playing the main stage of 2000 Trees Festival, which we're so excited about. We're playing Boomtown for the first time, we're playing Burn It Down for the first time, and a bunch of other small festivals - we're working with a great team. So things are, things are going to be great. Things are exciting. Let's just say that. Things are exciting.

It sounds like this year is going to be another very exciting one for Mallavora! Leading nicely on, I’d love to know, what do you really love about being in music?

I really love the chance to be an artist and to be a creative. I think the way my brain works, I can be quite strategy orientated, or like logistics orientated, or I really enjoy that side of stuff. I really enjoy the planning. I love planning. I love all of that, but doing this project, it's given me also the space to just like, create and immerse myself in the music and make art, and I never want to lose that. I think it's really good for me, and I never want that to end, basically.

And what important piece of advice would you give to someone aspiring to get into music? What are your words of wisdom?

Yeah. God, I mean, I know I've still got so much to learn. I've definitely not learned it all, by any means, but I would say, be bold. I think there's a lot of people who will try and tell you that, oh,that's never gonna happen, or you're not big enough for this, or they will try and put you in a little box. Don't listen to it. Be bold. You know, I guess it's almost like, act for the life that you want. The sheer amount of times that we have been laughed at when we said our ambitions, and then we went and made it happen anyway. So many people told us it was never gonna happen, and then the satisfaction to like, actually go and just prove everyone wrong is wicked. So yeah, there will be a fair amount of voices that want to keep you small, and I would say, ignore them and do it anyway.

I found this an incredibly interesting conversation with valuable insights that also made me question a lot about why more isn’t being done for those with extra needs to make music more accessible, and overall more inclusive. The fans, after all, are the lifeline of the industry, so it’s interesting to think what it could look like with further improvements to broaden the inclusivity of it for them, and the artists. Even just starting off with some of the small but necessary changes and additional help Jess mentions in making Mallavora shows more accessible, not only for their audience, but for themselves as a band too. The benefits that these could have being used more broadly throughout shows could make a huge difference to artists and their fans.

A big thank you goes to Jess for sharing these valuable insights which I have absolutely no doubt will get people thinking, and hopefully talking. The advocacy of not only Jess but the rest of the band too on the topic of accessibilty is admirable and bold, albeit also a necessity for them personally on many levels too. Mallavora’s latest single, ‘Smile’ is officially out now. It’s a powerful song with lots of “disabled rage” as Jess describes, speaking upon the contradictory nature of the way disabled people are treated, “being both tokenised and sidelined, and demanding respect and real change instead of the pity and underestimation” that they often face.

You can find Jess on Instagram at @jessica.yiska and TikTok at @jessofmallavora
You can follow Mallavora on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube.

Now sit back, take a few minutes, and watch the video for ‘Smile’ below.