Alison Wonderland

Alison Wonderland

Alison Wonderland doesn’t even want to think about where she would be without music. Particularly after releasing her latest album, Awake, which was an incredibly emotional writing experience.

“With Awake I genuinely feel like that album saved my life because I was coming to a lot of realisations about myself,” Wonderland explained. “I had hit rock bottom and through verbalising that through music I was able to make real life steps to change my life and get out of a pretty dark space.”

Since Awake is such an open and honest record it obviously carried a lot of weight for Wonderland, which wasn’t released until it was finally unleashed into the wild.

“I was sitting on all of this emotion and weight, so when I actually released this album it genuinely felt like I had released everything that I had written about as well which was a huge relief.”

By investing so much emotion and personal experience into this record Wonderland says the production process was an incredibly “draining and scary” one. This record was so draining in fact that there were multiple times where she said she “wanted to quit because I was so dead from giving everything to it.”

One particular example stood out when Wonderland spoke about the gruelling process of producing electronic music, “When you’re producing you’re listening to every single sound within the music so I could be listening to one single snare for eight hours straight just to get it right… I can’t even look at people straight after sitting in a studio for that long.”

That can create a weird dichotomy for Wonderland when she has to then transition from production mode into performance mode.

“When I play a show not long after a studio session it can be really hard for me because it is a different side of my brain and it can take a few days to adjust.”

Luckily Wonderland was able to take the time to adjust following the release of Awake in order to prepare for her recent headline performance at the world famous Coachella music festival. Just three years ago Wonderland was performing at Coachella as one of the opening acts so to rise so rapidly was “pretty insane.”

Since this was her second time performing at the festival Wonderland knew how important this particular performance would be.

“Coachella is such a landmark festival because it can define your next step so it was important for me to give everything to it.” 

In order to achieve this goal Wonderland told City Hub that she invested her entire pay cheque from the festival back into the set design.

Not only did Wonderland handcraft the visual aspect of her show but she also wanted to wow the audience with her performance by showing that she is more than just a DJ.

“You can say it as much as you want to but unless I get up on stage and play the cello or sing live nobody is going to know, they have to see it to understand,” explained Wonderland. “That is something I realised after Coachella because I received all of these messages about how it blew people’s minds or that they had no idea I could do that.”

Jun 16. Vivid Live: Curveball, Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh. $82+b.f. Tickets & Info: www.carriageworks.com.au

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