Introducing Malade, the gloss-pop project of Montreal-based singer, songwriter and producer Camille Brown. RnB groove meets crafty pop in this playful, maximalist endeavor.

“Casting Call” (2024), co-produced with Damien Muller, is Malade’s hot and cold, intimate-yet-distant take on singer-songwriter pop. Guitar and bass are plucked under a chilling vocal that dips in and out of auto-tune. The infectious run sung on the hook, “Loving you is a casting call,” later thickened with an unyielding vocoder, contains the pain of loving deeply and wholly in the current dating culture. “The culture of love we find ourselves in feels more often than not like a sick competition to keep someone’s attention,” explains Malade. It follows a string of earnest, sugar-coated girlpop releases, singles  “Give Up” (2023), “My Energy” (2023) and “Cry” (2022).

After a time in the Vancouver music scene, Malade released her debut EP, Blindfolder (2020). She and artist/producer Sam Tudor recorded the songs at Monarch studios, along with the late engineer Olivia Quan, pulling from a myriad of influences – from early ‘90s Francophone balladeers (Lara Fabian) to British electronic artists (James Blake, Tirzah). The recording features players from both jazz and classical backgrounds (Mar Emanuel, Jennifer Charters, Wallgrin) adding dimension to this fierce and unpredictable pop offering. “There’s a wide range of emotional transparency in these songs,” Malade confesses. “Some moments are unabashedly huge, others are like quiet promises. They’re the most candid, dry performances I’ve ever dared to record.”