There's no getting around it, AlunaGeorge are big news. A nomination for the BRITS Critics Choice Award here, second place in the BBC Sound of 2013 there, throw in a sold out headline tour: they're rapidly turning people on to their ethereal-come-electronic style. We caught up with Aluna at the end of 2012 to talk getting started, East London life and her Grandma's cardigan.
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| Aluna wears Religion Wall St pants while performing in Paris. |
How did you
get started?
George
offered to do a remix for me, through a guy I was working with at the time. It got
played by Rob De Bank on Radio 1. That’s how we met so we decided to try
hanging out in the studio.
You make it
sound easy!
It was
really easy! There was no real motivation; we just thought we’d see what
happened. We weren’t in a position to have a plan at that time. We experimented
and for the first year we did whatever we wanted to please ourselves – because
we were so new no one else really cared what we were doing at that point.
Have you
always wanted to have a career in music?
I didn’t know
I could do music as a job when I was at school. I really didn’t know that this
singing thing could become my career – so it took a while to become a real
dream rather than a dream dream.
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| Wearing the Religion Dieux jumper for a photoshoot. |
There is so
much hype around you, do you ever feel pressured?
No, the
hype is really motivating. We spent enough time pleasing ourselves to create
music that was interesting to put out there. All it means when people are
talking about us is that they care enough about what they hear to comment on it,
which really pushes us forward.
With all
the exciting new music coming out of the UK at the moment, does it feel like
you are part of a movement?
The
movement is really growing one band at a time. For a long time people didn’t know
how to place us, and that’s because most people have something a little
different. There’s so much more to come.
How did you
find yourself in London?
As soon as
I started doing music I moved to London. I like to try and make my home somewhere
that no one rules the roost, where there is no particular direction and a whole
mixture of people. I feel like in East London you can get absorbed in to the
pressure of appearances. When you’re starting out you need so much focus, I didn’t
want the fun distractions that I could have in East London, I didn’t want to
squander any of my energy that I needed, so I moved to North London.
How would
you describe your style?
I struggle
with that in some ways because I like to get opposites working together, get
something really masculine and really feminine at the same time, or go for
something quite urban and try to mix it with something chic. It’s hit and miss –
sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t! I do try to like something for as long
as I can so that I haven’t got a room full of discarded clothes but I am a bit of
a magpie, I like new clothes and experimenting with them.
Have you
got anything that you wear over and over?
My Grandma’s
cardigan! It’s actually in the first photo shoot we ever did, I’m on Georges
shoulder. We were playing around with the clothes we had and I said ‘Well I’ve
got this old cardigan... you know what I’ll just put it on!’ So it ended up in
the shot and looks so artistic. I wear it a lot! People have even tried to steal
it once or twice when I’m not looking.
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| Grandma's cardi in action. |
What is your
relationship like with George?
We have a
really great working relationship. I’m always surprised how little we argue
when we’re working. We can argue about what sandwiches we are going to eat for
lunch, but nothing major. I’m a little more fiery than George so I might have a
loud shouty moment and George will say what he thinks quite calmly. But in the end
whoever has the best idea wins.
You’ve done
a headline tour – do you get any nerves?
I am really
nervous when I come on stage, if I try to do anything other than sing then it
comes out so I try not to say too much when I’m performing. Before I go on, I do
vocal exercises which focus my attention, and sometimes I pull my drummer aside
and make him scream with me! He gets nervous too so I think we should scream
together rather than acting like we’re all really calm and do this all the
time.
What are
the crowds like?
We always get
a good response at festivals because people are there to discover new music. We
did a couple of gigs where nobody knew who was going to play so the combination
of them not having chosen to see us and the shock factor of us being revealed...
it took the crowd a bit of time to get over the ‘Huh?!’ moment and get in to
it!
What’s the
dream for AlunaGeorge?
I’d love to
tour the album when it comes out in Spring. Or playing festivals where people
know who we are would be a dream too!
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| Aluna while in our Shoreditch High Street store. |
