John Malkovich is releas­ing an EP and it sounds incredible

John Malkovich is sit­ting on stage while the lyrics ​“Malkovich, Malkovich what the fuck are you talk­ing about?” rever­ber­ate around us. He’s in Lon­don at Rough Trade East for the release of his debut EP and they’ve left the record play­ing in the back­ground, on repeat, dur­ing the Q&A. The lyric reach­es a kind of synth-dri­ven hys­te­ria, yet Malkovich seems unfazed.

“I’ve pret­ty much heard that since the day I was born,” he tells LWLies after sign­ing copies of the ​‘Illu­mi­nat­ed EP’ which fea­tures Dweezil Zappa’s WTF? remix. ​“First my par­ents. Then every teacher I ever had, then every girl­friend, then my chil­dren. So it car­ries on. Hard­ly sur­prised by it at all.”

The EP is a col­lab­o­ra­tion with musi­cian Eric Alexan­drakis who cre­at­ed the ambi­ent piece over which Malkovich recites Plato’s ​‘Alle­go­ry of the Cave’. Alexan­drakis want­ed the record to ​“rep­re­sent the mind in a cryo­genic state, frozen in time, while the world con­tin­ues to revolve around it in states of war, peace, love.” He then sent the track to Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono, Zap­pa and sev­er­al oth­er artists to remix. The result is exper­i­men­tal; fol­low­ing no dis­cernible time sig­na­ture, inter­spersed with war sounds, explo­sions and what may or may not be Yoko Ono cry­ing. Malkovich’s voice, how­ev­er, has an embalm­ing effect. It wraps around all the chaos, hold­ing the cra­zier frag­ments togeth­er, tight as jelly.

Such is the pow­er of Malkovich’s monot­o­nous voice. A pow­er that few are more aware of than Malkovich him­self. He remem­bers an email Coco Schri­jber sent him years ago in which she wrote: ​‘Every­one agrees you have the most bor­ing voice in the world and there­fore I think you should be the nar­ra­tor of my doc­u­men­tary.’ To which Malkovich respond­ed, ​‘Yeah, of course I should.’ That’s how he came to nar­rate Bloody Mon­days and Straw­ber­ry Pies, a movie which Shri­jber describes as ​‘a delib­er­a­tion on boredom.’

But Malkovich’s voice is not bor­ing. At least, there’s more to it than that. There is a soft tex­ture that lies beneath. It’s as sub­tle as silk and instant­ly recog­nis­able. One jour­nal­ist described it as ​‘reedy and faint­ly orgas­mic.’ Bor­ing, orgas­mic, what­ev­er, his voice has become both his trade­mark and his great­est tool.

Malkovich says he hates the sound of his voice (but then, who doesn’t hate the sound of their own voice?). He also pro­fess­es to hav­ing ​“lim­it­ed abil­i­ties” and a ​“lim­it­ed intel­lect”. He wears his mod­esty like an over­sized coat and this is, per­haps, what has kept him ground­ed. He even sits a lit­tle slumped in his chair. That is, until you get him in a con­ver­sa­tion: then the mar­i­onette strings are pulled tight and he’s got you locked.

“I’m just a per­son, like any­one else on the train,” he shrugs, evok­ing of scene from Being John Malkovich in which the epony­mous hero turns out to be just an ordi­nary guy in a base­ball cap. ​“Yeah, I may be quite known but actu­al­ly you’re not known, what you do is known.”

Music is some­thing Malkovich is rel­a­tive­ly unknown for. Yet it’s been a pas­sion of his almost as long as act­ing. He trav­elled for five years with a baroque orches­tra, worked with sev­er­al clas­si­cal musi­cians and once per­formed an impromp­tu ren­di­tion of Leonard Cohen’s ​‘Hal­lelu­jah’ for Russ­ian TV. Com­mer­cial­ly? Pub­licly? The whole music thing comes as a bit of a sur­prise. Even now, the EP is being issued as a lim­it­ed edi­tion vinyl-only release – no dig­i­tal down­load or stream available.

The cov­er fea­tures Malkovich in a metal­lic green suit with Chi­nese drag­ons curl­ing across the lapels, match­ing the wall­pa­per print behind him. On the 12” vinyl itself, Malkovich sits in a pose that mim­ics Rhodin’s ​‘The Thinker’. Flip it over and – hey presto! – there’s Malkovich sit­ting in his birth­day suit on the B‑side. The images were shot by San­dro Miller who is also releas­ing a book titled ​‘The Malkovich Ses­sions’, a 17-year project in which he re-enacts icon­ic pho­tographs: Malkovich as a mous­ta­chioed Sal­vador Dali; Malkovich as a very con­vinc­ing Albert Ein­stein; Malkovich as a less con­vinc­ing (but nonethe­less cap­ti­vat­ing) Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe; Malkovich as both of Diane Arbus’ twins, stand­ing side by side. It’s all rather meta. It’s all rather Malkovich.

The ​‘Illu­mi­nat­ed EP’ and ​‘The Malkovich Ses­sions’ are both avail­able to buy via Rough Trade.