@alpaca.presents
by Brandon van der Berg @vdb.brandon
Sound Engineer for the night was Georgie
I sat down for a really fun chat with Holly Eve, also from Warm Sounds the company we were co-partnering with for the night about her headlining show at ‘To The Moon’ on the 12th, she hosted the show, a very big discussion about consent and the graphic themes that surround it. We talked about her music and issues women face, and I hope that my respect for the themes present is shown overwhelmingly. We have also covered the show as a night, read about that here. Find her on Instagram Or Spotify For Fans Of Zero 7, Daughter, The Staves. Read the Interview below. How has your week been? “Well, Tiring. I got back from Trees on the weekend, it was very muddy, very rainy, I just went for the Saturday evening because it was cheap and it rained the whole time. But the bands were good, it was nice. We were stood in this Forest Stage where Georgie was doing sound and me and my brother were just fully vibing to the music, so I was like lets just ride it out. And now this skirt *Gestures to her skirt*, I washed it yesterday, but It was sodden the whole way through but It was great and it felt very cathartic to stand there in the rain.” From what I’ve seen, I see a lot of focus surrounding self-love and mental wellbeing, like in your song “Pray To The Body”, Do you have any favourite self-care tips? “Haha yeah, I’m surprised you found that song I actually took it off of Spotify and I’m starting to regret that. I’m one of those people, which probably means I’m an introvert, that time by myself is what I need, It doesn’t have to be special time just need to be by myself, and I’m not doing a very good job of that at the moment. I’m doing a lot of things and trying to see people. Last night I tidied my room and that was probably the best self-care I could have done for myself. But I like to meal prep, that’s my favourite self-care thing. Love a meal prep. I did that this weekend because I knew I was gonna have such a busy week and I just cooked loads of beans and veg so all week I’ve had a really nice lunch. I saw something recently and it was like ‘meal prep is just gentrified left overs’ haha.” Climate change is really important to you like in your Song “Rebellion” you posted on YouTube in 2020, What is a pressing climate related issue on your mind right now? “I don’t know, I just wrote that in lockdown and forgot that existed on the internet. I’ve been vegan for 7 years so that’s my main way of doing the environmental stuff. I feel like I have kind of tapped out of the media in general, so I don’t feel that up to date with what my current environmental stance is, although that originally came from an animal welfare kind of place. My housemates are very on it with recycling.” You are a Journalist, and photographer, how would you say these have influenced how you see or write your music? “I would say it’s the other way around for me. My songwriting influences a lot of my journalism as in I like to be quite creative in the way I talk about stuff, id say from a more practical point of view especially at the moment I’m working in marketing. With certain things I’m doing with my music right now I definitely have a more methodical approach.” You have a big focus surrounding spirituality and religion and you’ve written songs and poems like that such as “I am a Goddess” and “The Book of The Leaves”, how would you describe your faith? What do you believe in? “Spiritual would be how I describe it. I think a lot of people fall into that ‘atheist meets Buddhist’ kind of middle ground of spirituality. I’m definitely into the more witchy stuff, the Wiccan and Pagan religions do really interest me. But its not something I super connect with, it interests me a lot and “Goddess” is a song I’m hoping to be my next release, I want to get it produced really nicely though. That song came from a place of those religions when I wrote it.” What introduced you to poetry? “At school whenever, I was never that into English to be honest, but whenever we got to write poetry was when I got really excited, and I would always see it, as I come from a very musical family, like oh as a song that works. I’ve never really seen poetry as a separate thing to songs, I fully see it like poetry is a song without words, that might not be so accurate with other people but that’s how I’ve always seen it, its always gone hand in hand with songwriting.” Self-expression is clearly very important to you and you do it in many ways, which makes you feel most free to create? “Definitely songs. I mean I do like painting, sewing aswell and I like to dabble in as many as I can, but songwriting is probably the one that comes the most easy and is the most creative.” So you feel that songs are poems with music, but you feel more comfortable songwriting than you do writing poetry? “Yeah, I struggle to write poems because I write melodies to them, and then I want to make it into a song. I do enjoy writing poems, but I really have to force myself to not make it a song, and also think more on what I’m saying. When you’re singing you use the sound aswell as the words, but with poems its literally just the words so I find a bit more pressure with trying to get myself across.” You are/were really involved in your University, can you tell me a few of your favourite experiences at University? “I guess I enjoyed doing all the student union and BSA stuff. But it feels like a very different world to now, I do try to distance myself from it. There was a phase of time, especially coming out of lockdown where people come up to me and are like ‘I feel like I know you, where have I seen you?’ and I didn’t want to go ‘Oh because I’m the president’ I didn’t think that that was a very good look haha. So I didn’t really enjoy the attention from that, so coming out of Uni I’ve been trying to forge a path separate to it, but that doesn’t negate all the fun things, like “How to Say No” the recording I released was a version I did with the BSA and we went to a church in Easton and had all the women singing and it was really nice. That and the songwriting retreat were probably my favourite, Anna did an amazing job with the retreat.” From your experience, Do you think the education system is a safe place for women and why? “Yeah I think so, I’ve always been quite academic and I’ve had a lot of time of being the teachers pet which I think ensures you a certain amount of safety. In my experience its been fine, I was in a lot of meetings when I was doing student president stuff when we were talking about inclusivity and the thing that was coming up more was race, and how everyone at BIMM is white and it was really difficult, because we were sat in a room of white people talking about how there’s too many white people. But we didn’t want to head up a society as a white person and be like “This is the inclusivity society” but we also didn’t want to put someone who wasn’t white in that position and say “That, that’s your job, you have to do that”. But then if there’s not that space then why would people come there in the first place, so we didn’t know how to make it better. So I think that’s what I’ve noticed and experienced more.” Sex education in school is quite controversial surrounding the lack of information around consent, Do you think SE in school adequately prepares young people for a realistic adult life? “Probably no in summary. I don’t know if you got showed the tea video but we were showed that. But I found, this was a very particular experience to me and I don’t think many people would feel the same but I went to an all-girls school, and it was a very feminist school which is great. But they took it too far and instilled this fear of men, like overprotective like ‘men just want to this to you, they just want to have sex with you, they don’t care about you’, so then going into the world and started dating I was scared. It was hard to then be empowered in my decisions because I had been brought up to be scared, which I think that actually will resonate with people.” And SE as far as I am aware isn’t present at University, at least not at mine, what would your opinion be on implementing a higher level of SE? “To be honest I think that’s too late, we just need to start doing it younger. Having services available for people at university to find out on their own is great but I don’t think it being mandatory is necessarily the correct way but I think just, ya know, things like “How to Say No” is about consent not just in a sexual way but like when you feel pressured into physical contact such as hugging that weird family member from a young age, just asking ‘Oh would you like to do this’ or even just things with like food people have bad relationships with it and if we were even more consent based with food like “Do you want this, are you hungry” not like “you have to finish your plate!”.” 1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted as an adult 1, What do you think is something all men can be doing to make women feel safer in public spaces? “I’d say the only thing that is easy to be mindful of is just including people in conversations. The only thing I’ve found being in spaces with men is being asked like “Oh, do you want to speak?”, but I don’t have any specific advice.” You have a lot of experience on the collaborative side of music, you’ve played in bands like “Pascale”, “The Clover Heads” and worked for Anna Anise alongside The Women’s Collective for her music, have you always felt safe to share creative ideas openly? “Yeah. I mean I remember my grandad, he is a jazz musician and has always been in bands and he said, or I think it was a lecturer but don’t quote me on that, but they said something along the lines of “I’ve always been the worst musician of every band I’ve ever been in, because you learn the most”. And I resonate with that, I’ve never been a particularly good musician, most of the bands I’ve been in I’ve done the songwriting for. I’ve never been technical, so I’ve always been nervous to collaborate in that sense, but as soon as it comes to songwriting that’s my thing.” Also on The Womens Collective, you’ve previously released a Live version of your new track “How To Say No” at St Anne’s Church with their help, How different was it to work in such a large group of musicians? “They’re all friends, so it felt quite easy. But I turned up to our first rehearsal not totally prepared, but it sounded lovely. Anna organised it all, a lot of the BSA was her. I just turned up and played the song and everyone sang. It felt good to be heard, that was a fairly new song at the time and we were doing this thing we’d planned before I decided on “How to say No” and thought it couldn’t be a better chance with a better group of people to do it with.” You’ve touched on it already, but would you like to talk about “How To Say No” and what it’s about? “Yeah, my overarching thing is that its about consent and saying no to things. It’s a combination of a few different experiences, and at the time the main thing that “How to say No” came from was the BSA, I was doing too much work and I didn’t have time, I was really overworked and really tired and doing too much and didn’t feel like I could say no to things, there were things I wanted to do that I just couldn’t. I was talking to student support and they were like “You just need to say no to more stuff” so I kind of had that already in my mind. And there were also a few experiences of, in the second bridge which is my favourite part of the song, that’s about being at love saves the day and being in the audience. There’s a lyric that says “When I try to call you out, you don’t quite see what its about” and I was in the audience watching Mahalia, and she introduced it with “This is a song about when you’re in the club and this guy won’t leave you alone” and I turned to this guy doing exactly that, and I was like “Did you hear what she just said” haha. I was calling him out and he didn’t even understand at all. SHES LITERALLY SAYING IT RIGHT THERE. There’s another verse about, I didn’t really like that guy that much and we’d all already come back to my house for afters so I was like, I guess, he’s here now, he was a nice guy and it was fine but I just didn’t know how to say no, not in a- . I have never had a situation that’s been that drastic if you know what I mean, but what I wanted to convey Is the little things like “ah he’s nice, and he’s here but im not that into it, I guess its fine” is the main theme of the song.” Who Is your favourite women in the scene right now? “I was gonna say it’s a bit of a basic answer but scrap that, its not. I think Billie Eilish is doing great things, she’s smashing it, really empowered in what she’s doing. One of my Uni things is on about the vogue thing and the backlash of that and her being like “No this is me, empowered, this is me”. Do have anything you’d like to promote? “Just the song, listen to the song. Also “Control” which is the B side, that song is about spiking which is not something I’ve ever experienced myself. And I’m quite nervous for someone to be like ‘well why did you write a song about it if you’ve not experienced it?’ but my Uni project was “How to say No” and I was writing some more songs to go alongside it for an EP, and I was sat talking to a lecturer and his daughter was maybe like, 5? And he was like ‘I’m seeing a lot of stuff about spiking in the news and I’m really quite scared for her”. Quite a few of my friends have gone through that and so I wrote a song about it. Lyrically its very simple, but in terms of the production of the song I spent a lot of time on the second half, I was trying to recreate that feeling of being out of control. But I’m quite nervous for that, I played it in class and a friend of mine who I didn’t know had been spiked like cried and she was really happy that I wrote a song about it.” Find her on Instagram Or Spotify For Fans Of Zero 7, Daughter, The Staves.
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