Hey beautiful people! Thank you for taking some moments to tune in with this project! Your time and connection is precious beyond words. My name is Alice Night, I am a singer, writer and theatre maker born in Australia with strong ancestral roots in England and Germany. Singing is the most natural thing in my life, it is a place of reflection, expresssion, offering, receiving and connection. This is the first album I am going to create that fully embraces creative freedom – an adventure into art, humanity and mythology.
I feel that to create music and share it with others is a core aspect of being human. I am entralled by the effects of music and the voice as a potent force for change and have witnessed this in action countless times as both a listener and a maker.
This is not a work aimed for the radio but rather an artfull, present, deep exploration of feeling, healing, celebration, ancestry, nature and aliveness. As well as the magical and meandering, this work will be shamelessly immense when needed. We live in a society in which many people feel severe disconnection, this album is a beckoning for our birthright to sing, to sound, to connect to natural environments and elements, each other and ourselves. This is a revaluation of the power of dreams, innate knowing and our profound capacity to repair what is damaged. Alongside this quest for sincere creativity I will also be recording acoustic versions of a collection of my folk songs that have not yet been professionally recorded such as I’LL BE THERE, AT THE CORNER, KEEP THE INSTINCTS, UNTIL WE’RE DONE, KING OF THE WORLD, NECTAR, FACTORY GIRL, and my FKA TWIGS cover of TWO WEEKS (featuring guest artist’s musical elements.) This project is effectively more like a double album in this regard, one part traditional, one part wild.
To create this work I will explore Celtic melodies and mythology, the power of intention, invented language and symbols, and practices that engage me with intuitve awareness. I will combine chants and ancient language with elements of poetry, harmony and sound scape. This album is a quest to recover ancestral connection and make music that links myself and listeners to a deep sense of nobility, truth and empowerment (Alice the name means the truth / nobility.) I will also call on the guest artists to express the sounds that call them home. This work will be inspired by trees, oceans, birds, cliffs, light, sky, animals, fire, earth, rock, spider webs, dew… and the need for us to know where we came from and what we are connected to in order to be able to reach out and meet others in wholehearted ways today, now. This album will express a process of reconciliation with self and an uncovering of humanities shared experiences, with the vision of standing together for principles of care for nature and humanity.
To create this beast of a project I am working in collaboration with producer / composer Chris Townend. Chris has worked with some of the worlds most treasured musicians and is deeply creative by nature. Two major composition artworks of his are permenantly installed at MONA gallery in Tasmania, both of which thrill me conceptually and aesthetically. We will initiate the recording process in Chris’s home studio in Tasmania in March 2017 surrounded by trees. I met Chris more than a year ago at Rhythmic Seeds music gathering in the northern rivers, we hit it off instantly talking into the night about the nature of lyric writing and song creation. He then assited me in recording my vocals for the track Brains in Our Claws for my last album and we got chatting about a new project that we would work on together from scratch oneday… This project is that conversation manifest.
For this album I will work with other powerful and heart opening musicians such as tibetan singer Tenzin Choegal, harmony singer Georgia Frew, opera singer Rose Grayson, singer song-writer Kahl Wallis and keyboard/piano artist Simon Mavin. These artists cut through to the core, their tones are deeply impacting and the reasons they make work inspire me greatly. I will feature poetry/rap by The Viking N3 as well as intense rhythm, field recordings, analog synth and strings.
Think
Dead Can Dance, Sigur Ros, Deya Dova, Bjork, Ani Difranco, Laboratorium Piesni and a Celtic choir all hanging out on an album … hehe … seriously though, this is the vision.
This album will be released online in the Australian winter of 2017 and have an accompanying bit torrent download including sketches, poetry, photographs, filmed footage and all lyrics, documenting the process of discovery, creation and recording. The intention is to press to vinyl later in 2017 as my previous album Culture How Could You? did not make it to vinyl, this one will!
Thank you for your belief in me, your tireless support of my work and your underlying respect for the role of music and art in healing, connecting and re-visioning. To call in the healthy new we need a humanity of healed hearts, creative minds, wise knowing and activated individuals and groups.
ART + HONESTY = ALCHEMY
With love,
Alice Night 27 Feb 2017
SOME TESTIMONIALS ABOUT THE MUSIC I AM PART OF CREATING AND PEOPLE’S EXPERIENCE OF IT
“So impressed by the depth of storytelling and the musicianship. I’ll be watching everything Alice does from this point like a hawk – you got a fan in me.” Gen Fricker – (Triple J Unearthed)
“I listen to your music almost everyday. Helps bring tingles and spinnings to my heart.” Roma Banks
“Alice Night is one of the most influential song-writers for me in the circle of artists I am a part of. She is an inspiration; with courage she explores depths of feeling and realms of thought that need attention in this time of reworking how we relate to each other and the earth, carrying a strong sense of integrity in translating her perception and feeling through her voice and painting of story that receivers find healing, reassuring and empowering. Her natural ease with her words and bird-beautiful voice are testament to her self-knowing and continual exploration and growth.” Peter Hunt (Kooii)
“Alice Night will wail your shelter to the ground and stand naked with you, fearless and raw. The maturity of her appraisal of the human condition is apparent in her haunting vocals, natural physicality and her earnest lyrics which make everyone in the room feel more real. She plucks the actuality from the busy noise of illusion and holds it up in front of you, saying “Yes – I feel this too.” Bravo Child – (Performance Artist)
“Alice has that rare combination of a wildly creative spirit, astounding work ethic and deep care for her fellow humans.”
Chris Liddell – (Digital Tao Studio)
“I listen to your CD every single day. It gets me through.” Stephanie Fall
“I absolutely love your music! ‘At the corner’ is my most played song on my computer! So much heart and truth!” Alex Everett
“When I first heard Alice Night in Puebla Mexico I was instantly struck by her warm wonderful voice, and as the seconds ticked by, I became mesmerised by the interesting melodies which accompanied complex, intelligent chord progressions. This unique musician, has managed to grab my attention wholeheartedly. Her stage presence is simple and frank, she doesn’t try to be someone she isn’t. This is gold in this day and age. I believe Alice Night can rise up to be a worthy Australian icon within a few years.” Maya Sapir (Tupenny Opera)
“Alice Night is an artist who will challenge you in so many ways. Her art does what art should do. Make you ask questions of yourself you never dared to. Her voice is the perfect medium to deliver such poignant observations of the world and share honest and heart-breaking stories. She’ll make you question your own art and humanity. She’ll make you cry. Every time. I’ve never heard a voice so honest, so free from the taints of social “shoulds”. Should sound like, should look like, should feel like. She is unapologetically, curiously, dangerously living her art.” – ALPHAMAMA (Musician and mentor)
“Vibrates through all dimensions and cuts through sludge into raw magic.” Petrina Speller
“The tone to Alice Night’s voice is just irresistible.” Dave Ruby Howe – (Triple J Unearthed)
“Alice Night’s music is hauntingly beautiful – it reaches in deep and stirs your soul… So.much.wisdom pouring through every note – her enchanting voice moves me to tears everytime.” Suebee Fae
“When exquisite poetry meets a voice of such raw subtle power; one lay witness to a force understood by the heart. Alice Night forms such a delicate balance within her strength and softness sometimes I feel I dare not breathe so as not to disturb the
perfection.” Jeunae Rogers (Singer)
“Alice’s music connects you to your deep and most intimate self – she gives movement, space and colour to the internal world and inspires free and deeply felt expression. Her art is a magnificent gift.” Jodie Milton
“The kind of magical performance that makes all who experience it stop whatever it was they were doing and be there, in the moment.” Justin Ryan
“Raw, real, spellbindingly authentic…” Kath Lloyd
“What happens with your voice is that it makes me feel I am walking through a ancient nordic forest in a time I can’t understand…” Antonio Banderasantander
$4500 the studio recording itself and the audio mixing
$1500 to pay the guest artists
$1000 mastering of the album
= $7000
If we raise more than the target…..
If we make $7500 I’ll be able to do an incedible photoshoot with Arterium for the album cover art
If we make $8000 we can make a gorgeous film clip with a professional film maker
If we make $11000 I’ll be able to pay a publicist to get the album out (which is actually nearly as important as the recording itself – this allows us to reach people!)
If we make more than that, then this album is just going to just get richer, fuller and more and more epic…
more film clips and pressing to vinyl sooner than later… : )
> This will be my third recording as Alice Night (EP: ‘Like Red and Yellow Leaves’ 2013), (Album: ‘Culture How Could You?’ 2016). In the past I have overextended myself – I have designed this project in a way that is not biting off more than I can chew.
> One challenge will be working with the guest artists to incorporate their sonic elements while not being able to fly everyone to Tasmania, thankfully we can work online together at points so that people like Tenzin Choegal (Brisbane) can make contributions that we can then feature on the album.
> I have learnt the hard way in the past that deadlines can bloom out and unexected costs can build up and so have tailored this project to prevent this from happening by keeping it simple. The sonic elements will be powerful at their core and therefore not require 30 layers for us to feel them.
> Recording the songs, poems and combining the sonic elements will not be an issue as Chris the producer of the album is very well experienced and I am more seasoned now than I was last time, every time we create we learn and grow. I feel ready for this album and believe that even Chris Townend and I as a duo team could create a magical musical offering, anything else will be a gorgeous bonus.
> I want this project to feel powerful for the listener. Having this orientation will allow us to work in different ways, sometimes recording a song with only vocal layers for example. We will create with the resources we have available to us and can guarentee that a meaningful and artful work will come from this.