Alice George Perez (31) grew up moving around a lot, spending her childhood and teenage years in Japan and New Zealand thanks to her diplomat dad. While English has taken on the role of mother tongue for her, Perez’s passport is French, and a few years ago she settled in Brussels after studying textile design in Scotland and a stint in Marseille. The constant in her life: Music, or, more specifically, “string-flirting, finger-picking chamber-folk and choral avant-pop”, as she puts it. We sat down with the rising talent to talk about her upcoming record, being weird on stage, and trying not to be an old fart.
Into the Wild is a series produced in collaboration with Forest TV, a Brussels-based project unearthing new music while supporting the local scene.
Did all these different environments you lived in influence you musically?
As a kid, you’re not too aware of what’s going on around you and what country you’re in. But of course what’s around you influences you, whether you like it or not. But music as children was mostly what was going on in the house, so what our parents were listening to. They were quite huge Beatles fans, so there was a lot of that.
What were your first contacts with music?
When I was three years old, they sat me in front of a piano with a Japanese teacher: ‘That’s what you’re doing on Monday evenings after school now’. I hated it. We had this awful electric piano and even the teacher hated it. It’s really difficult to teach kids on an instrument which isn’t in its original form.
How did you come to love it then?
We listened to a lot of music. It was something that was very present in our family. I was interested in musicians before I was interested in music and unconsciously surrounded myself with a lot of musicians. There was always a lot of music going on around me and a lot of people playing music.
In music, there was something a lot more lively and broad and infinite. The possibilities of it are just enormous.
I was interested in writing music from an early age. I would draw a lot as a child but the colour palette of the crayons was too finite for me to be able to express myself. In music, there was something a lot more lively and broad and infinite. The possibilities of it are just enormous.
I didn’t like the theory side and what we learned in school – it was really caged and there wasn’t much room for expression. So instead of practising what I was supposed to practise I would sit down and dabble and try different things. A piano is good for that. But at about 14 I learned to play the guitar because I wanted to be cool and all the cool kids played guitar. I was writing the music for the bands, but I wasn’t getting to play it because I played the piano and nobody cared about keyboardists.
Today, is music your main focus?
I was bumming around doing all these odd jobs, working in a restaurant, things like that. But booking your own shows, doing your own promotion, doing your own PR, all of this stuff – it takes an immense amount of time. I am trying to book these shows for a tour both in England and in America in September and October, and it is just constant work. Emailing back and forth and selling yourself in a way that nobody’s comfortable with. But you get better and better at it. And I think that once you put your foot down and you find ‘You know what? This is the only thing I can actually do’, it makes it easier.
What about social media, is that part of it, too?
I don’t particularly like doing it. For three years, I stayed away from it because it’s not like me. But that’s also what boomers say, and I’m only 31. I came to the point where I thought I need to start living with my time and not be an old fart. And after a while, you can find enjoyment in doing it as well. If you manage to keep it to a minimum and don’t become completely addicted which I’ve been dangerously close to.
When you contact labels, nobody answers if you don’t have thousands of followers.
I’m happy to put my stuff out there. It helps promote it. People see it who otherwise wouldn’t. And that’s how these things work these days: When you contact labels, nobody answers if you don’t have thousands of followers. It sucks but that’s the way it is. It’s just part of the work these days. If you don’t do it, it’s to your disadvantage.
You’re working on your first album. What can you already tell us about it?
There’s still no real dates as to when it will come out. It’s our baby and we’ve been holding on to it for about four years. The record is the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s quite hard to be really proud of what you do. I haven’t ever really been. I’ve put out a couple of things, but they were never completely as I had hoped. I’m kind of happy with them for a couple of weeks or a couple of months tops. It’s quite satisfying to put something out, but then you re-listen to it. With this one it’s different. We’ve worked so hard at it. We’ve come back to it so many times and we [my producer and I] know each other so well.
I had been writing all these parts in my head for a really long time. I’d always imagined this kind of megalomaniac orchestra, like a Brian Wilson circus show. And when finally sitting down with this guy who had similar ideas to mine, but in a less larger-than-life way, we brushed it down to a string quartette and a harp and a couple of synths – something quite bare and elegant that accompanies the music instead of making it something that it wasn’t originally. So it stays this kind of raw folk but in a chamber way.
What has the recording process been like? Do you work with other musicians?
Yes. I wrote all of the parts for myself and musicians come in and play them for the record. Cello, viola, violin, double bass,… I have a bit of an obsession with acoustic music. I love listening to various types of things, but myself, I even struggle with an electric guitar. I can’t play it, for me it’s a completely different instrument than the acoustic guitar. It just gets really confusing; all these cables everywhere and endless opportunities with all these pedals… it becomes completely otherworldly, the kinds of sounds that you can make with it. You get so far from the initial thing. It suits a lot of different types of music, just not mine.
Your music has something quite playful and experimental to it. Is that also true for the working process when writing the album?
The making of the album was terribly severe and serious and a lot of hard work and sleepless nights. It even sounds like that. The guitars and vocals were recorded in a fortified church in a French village just across the Belgian border. The reverb in there is out-of-this-world. We went down there for a week just with our instruments and tapes in the beginning of spring of last year. It was still quite bleak and dark and cold and we were freezing our fingers off. We did everything in analogue so when the bell rang or a car passed outside we had to do it again. The whole album sounds like that, quite dark and ominous and vulnerable. I’m very grateful it sounds that way; it feels like I’m moving on to something a bit more modern.
The underground in Brussels isn’t as underground as in other cities – it’s not holier-than-thou and hoity-toity.
I hope my Sound of Music / Grease / musical phase will stick around a bit longer though because I haven’t finished exploring that side of music yet. Ultimately, my life’s work will be creating a musical!
Let’s talk about the song that you recorded with Forest TV. Why did you pick this one? What is it about?
“Little Yellow Sock” is a song that I chose to play because there’s not that much record of it anywhere. It’s a song that every time I play it live, people talk to me about it. It’s catchy and short, it’s almost like a musical. There’s something quirky and jokey about it. It’s a song that I have been playing for 7 or 8 years now and it has evolved so much. It’s a song I wrote probably within the same time that the song lasts. I don’t know where it came from. It’s about a very dear friend of mine. We have always had these stupid little nicknames for each other, and she was just the yellow sock. You know, when you lose a sock and then you find it, and it was just there the whole time.
What is your favourite part of being a musician or making music? Is it when you have an idea for a song, is it in the recording studio, or on stage?
When you find a riff or a melody that breaks your own heart you just keep playing it over and over again, and it’s still good, and you think ‘I can work with that’. And then there’s this completely different type of enjoyment in recording. It’s like proving to yourself that you can do something. Sitting down and making your fingers bleed and just recording it again and again – there’s something enormously satisfying about it.
Do you like performing on stage?
I began by doing it for friends. It’s more safe. It helps you to actually go out there and do it for other people. To make myself feel less nervous, I’m honest and just tell the audience. Being on stage is weird and it always will be. But what’s the point if you’re not connecting with other people? I think I make folk to some extent – even though it doesn’t always sound that way – because it’s making music with people for people and the community around it.
Speaking of community, how do you experience Brussels’ musical landscape? Is there a folk scene?
There’s not a massive folk scene but there are places sprinkled around town. Un Peu in St Catherine is quite something. They do shows, readings, exhibitions… and it’s run by absolutely fantastic people, a couple in their 50s. They’re both incredibly generous and it provides community. They open it up in the morning and serve coffee, and everyone can come and talk. There’s the Labokube as well and all these small underground venues. The underground in Brussels isn’t as underground as in other cities – it’s not holier-than-thou and hoity-toity. It happens to be underground because they don’t really have funding.
Is Brussels a good city for an artist?
It’s relatively easy to be an artist in Brussels. There are people from everywhere. It’s still cheap enough to live. It becomes home for a lot of people who never meant for it to be in the first place. They come here and they stay. There’s not as much judgment of wanting to have teenage dreams for an extended amount of time – because that’s what being an artist is, isn’t it?
