Chrome Sparks

Chrome Sparks is the solo recording project of Jeremy Malvin, a producer and multi-instrumentalist raised in Pittsburgh who came up through classical percussion before turning to synthesizers and electronic production. As a teenager he played with the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, touring with the group in Asia and winning its Concerto Competition in 2008, and he went on to study percussion formally at the University of Michigan^[1]. While at Michigan, he also started a weekly house-music night that grew large enough to book touring names like Rusko, Avicii, and Wolfgang Gartner, an early sign of the pull toward electronic music that would eventually take over from percussion entirely^[2].

Before Chrome Sparks became a full-time project, Malvin drummed for the indie bands Miniature Tigers and Stepdad. That changed in 2012, when a self-released instrumental called "Marijuana" spread across the internet almost entirely on its own momentum, climbing to number one on Hype Machine and eventually drawing more than eighteen million cumulative streams^[1][2]. The track's success pulled Malvin away from session drumming and into a full-time solo career, and after a handful of self-released singles and EPs he signed to the Sydney label Future Classic in 2014^[2].

Malvin's debut full-length, the self-titled Chrome Sparks, arrived in 2018. Much of it was written during a monthlong stay at a secluded cabin in upstate New York, and the finished record leaned into layered Moog synthesizer work and arpeggios alongside guest vocal turns from Body Language's Angelica Bess and the Australian duo Kllo^[3]. Malvin has described his songwriting process as intentionally unplanned: he prefers experimenting directly with a synthesizer over sitting down to work out chord progressions in advance, chasing sounds by accident rather than by design^[1].

In the years after that debut, Malvin largely stepped back from releasing music as a headline artist and worked instead as a producer and writer for other people's projects, contributing to releases by Slayyyter, Lily Allen, Mallrat, and a Selena Gomez track co-produced with Benny Blanco^[4]. He returned to his own name in 2026 with Ball of Light, his third full-length and first solo album since 2018, released September 11 via Chrome Sounds/AWAL and led by the single "Sleeper" featuring Khalid and Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi^[6]. Malvin has framed the record as a deliberate return to his own voice: "Over the last seven years, I've focused mostly on collaborations and other artists' projects. Ball of Light is me finding myself again."^[5]

Outside of music, Malvin once spent a full year having lunch with a different person every day, a project he documented on the Tumblr blog "Lunch With Jeremy"; a number of those meetings grew into lasting friendships and mentoring relationships^[1]. His live shows pair his own synth and production work with a backing band, typically featuring Bill Delelles and Aaron Steele, built to translate his layered studio sound into a full-band performance^[1].