Hey, can you introduce the band?
Alia: Hi with Alia and Louie and we are aso
Lewie: aso baby
Alia: I grew up in Sydney
Lewie: and I'm from Melbourne
Alia: So yeah, we're rivals
Where did your music inspiration come from when you were young?
Lewie: A little bit of my inspiration came up around the family dinner table, because my dad hated the sound of people eating, so he would always play albums to drown out food noises. So yeah, there was always a lot of seventies and eighties pop and rock.
Alia: Yeah, and I guess we both remember growing up watching Rage and other music TV shows in Australia as kids during the nineties and hearing a lot of the music that we're really inspired by now and yeah
What have you prepared for your All Australian Mixtape?
Alia: We put together some electronic downtempo music from our contemporaries and also some favourites from the eighties and nineties.
Lewie: Probably throw a few bangers in there is well.
How would you characterise Australian music?
Alia: Um, I think it's very dysfunctional in I think Australian music often contains like an element of whimsy and sentimentality and timelessness. Australians love a good torch song, one that pulls at the heartstrings and makes you feel a sense of nostalgia for a place that may or may not have occurred.
Do you reckon there’s international artists that make music that sounds Australian?
Lewie: I think there is like maybe some sort of connection with different cities, like for instance, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. There seems to be a lot of similar styles of music coming from there that is also coming from Australia, especially Melbourne. But I don't know if it sounds Australian or whether both areas are on the same tip for whatever reason.
What do you think it is that makes Australian musicians wanna go overseas? And do you maintain an Australian-ness or do you try to shed some of that Australian part of your identity?
Lewie: Yeah. Maybe a bit of shedding perhaps. I think just because especially being in Europe as much as Australians can be exoticised in like a positive way of being on the other side of the city and being in this desirable, you know, nature and just like country in general, there's, there is also just a lot of like clowniness that comes with being in Australia and that to be involved in the music industry you have to, I mean you can either lean into it or you have to kind of shed it to be taken a bit more seriously.
I think actually like the first the first few times I played over here as a DJ, I would often get told that I wasn't playing the right sound for Europe, by people in the crowd that didn't really know what they were talking about either. But just because I was coming from this place that didn't have the same history that Germany or the UK or Italy does, for instance, I just wasn't taken as seriously.
a.s.o. is a new project, you’re album has just been released, How did the a.s.o. project come about?
Alia: We were just really exploring. We're exploring different sounds. We started out with a Spotify playlist and we just threw in a bunch of different tracks that we were interested in and not just kept evolving and growing and sort of going in different directions. And at some point we landed on some garbage and cardigans and sneaker pimps and Kylie and we just had all of this, all of this stuff that really was so far away from where we started out. Like we originally started out with, like just indie kind of pop sort of songs. And then, yeah, just really went into this whole like nineties realm and yeah, we were like, okay, let's, let's explore this, let's lean into this.
Lewie: And then we yeah, that's how it kind of started out. Yeah. I also think that during the process of songwriting with each other, realised that downtempo, dream pop, etc. I think we realised that both of our individual strengths were especially good together in that realm. Like, you know, I'm not super good at guitar, but we use quite a bit of guitar and then throughout the process we used it less and less and ended up leaning into more drone and synthesised sounds.
How did you approach the lyric writing, Alia?
Alia: Um, yeah, I don't know if that was really thought out at all. It was sort of just, I don't know, me just sort of sticking to like the, the Bob Dylan three chords and the truth kind of philosophy. I think it was like as long as it as long as the lyrics make sense to me and resonate with me then then they're fine, they're honest. And yeah, I wasn't. I wasn't very sort of methodical or, or, or anything with the lyrics and and I yeah, I will. I will.
Lewie: I couldn't even really think about the idea of writing lyrics because it's just such a different world for me, you know, sometimes like a word or phrase would appear, but to put a whole song together would be, yeah, rather daunting.
On the instrumental side, I think it's a bit easier because you can sit down with an instrument, hit a note, strike a chord, and you've immediately got something you can work with.
Alia: Most of the lyrics I write or else I also write is sort of poems or or they originate as sort of just thoughts on a page that I just add a melody to like. The melody always is secondary to the lyrics, which I think is really interesting, I think, and can be kind of challenging because obviously words aren't always going to fit into a melody. But yeah, that's the way and that seems to work for me.
What does a mixtape mean to you?
Alia: You kind of want to create a story or a journey throughout it. You want to have a start point and end point and you want and you want it to sort of flow cohesively and, and create interest and keep and yeah, keep it sort of moving in a way that yeah, it flows. And also I think it's good to have a few surprises in there as well.
Did you ever record tapes or burn CD mixtapes for crushes?
Alia: I never did that. I missed that whole, but I wish I did. I think I had a couple made for me, but I think I was maybe on the tail end of that era as it's a little bit too young.
Where do you live these days?
Lewie: We’re based in Neukolln, Berlin which is a very international area with a lot of people from America, UK, but also largely it's a Turkish, Lebanese and Syrian area. So German isn’t exactly the the lingua franca of the area.
Whats your daily routine like?
Alia: Yeah. So we, so yeah, we live in this sort of melting pot area and it's, it's great being surrounded by all different kinds of people and lots of different languages. And we love that aspect of it. We spend a lot of time in our studio, which is just a short walk from our house.
A lot of Australian musicians seem to live in Berlin?
Lewie: Yeah, we're part of this really supportive, like minded expat community and a lot of our friends, many of which are also Australian, make electronic music. And so we're able to share that experience.
A couple of our closest Aussie compatriots are is Mick, aka Fantastic man. And we've got Bell Towers around as well.
Alia: And we have friends who have a bar called Sway, which is also in our local area. And yeah, we sort of like hang out and DJ and share music at these places and it’s all very close and tight knit.
Do you miss Australia? Would you want to move back?
Alia: I love Australia, I miss the nature, I miss the weather, I miss people, I miss, I miss it a lot. So I'm always thinking every year is my last year and I'm always ready to head back home.
Lewie: I would like to go on the record as saying that I am not as interested in that.