‘I always go down online rabbit holes’: An interview with alys(alys)alys

Brazil-born and Berlin-based, alys(alys)alys explores the (un)common ground between experimental, club, and Soundcloud music, crafting a dynamic approach to her own productions and eclectic DJ sets. Since 2018, she has performed at venues and parties such as Berlin Atonal, CTM Festival, Venice Biennale, Herrensauna, and some of the notorious Brazilian parties such as Mamba Negra.

alys is also a resident of DRY, a Berlin-based music collective aimed at connecting queer, ethnically diverse, and boundary-pushing individuals. In the meantime, she has been working as the producer for singer-songwriter Monstera Black. In 2023, she released the second volume of her genre-blurring compilation, ‘booty&legs’, featuring club-ready music that sits at the intersection of experimental club sounds and pop.

Thanks for agreeing to this interview. It was a bit of a last-minute request. 

No, it’s all good. Thanks for having me. I’m actually free of work today. 

What do you do?

I work part-time in the office of an HHV record store. It’s mainly just cataloguing the releases. It’s kind of a broad catalogue, not just electronic.

How long have you been in Berlin?

It will be eight years this year, though I’m planning to move to Barcelona soon, somewhere more sunny. I just got tired of the winters in Berlin, and also the political situation. I feel it’s getting more and more tense. So yeah, maybe next year I’ll go back to Brazil for a bit and then I’ll decide.

Are you still connected with Brazil and its music scene? 

I was doing events there from when I was 18 as part of a collective called Sweetuf records. I got to meet a lot of people because although Brazil is big, the music scene is pretty well-connected. I also have a collective here in Berlin called DRY and we book a lot of the DJ’s and producers from Brazil when they’re on their summer tours.

Where in Brazil are you from?

I’m from Curitiba, which is a one-hour flight from Sao Paulo, six hours drive. I used to do events in Curitiba and also sometimes in Sao Paulo. The scene there is way bigger and a bit more interesting. But I never lived there. Then I moved to Italy, then Berlin.

Where did you start making music?

I’d been doing events and DJing a bit, and when I moved to Europe, I didn’t know what to study, because I was 18, 19, and my parents were kind of pushing me to do a bachelor’s degree. So I did one in Berlin in music production and sound engineering.

Your music is really complex in that you can hear that you listen to a lot of very diverse music and absorb it without replicating it; all the influences are synthesised in a very unique way. 

My grandfather played jazz and my grandmother played piano, but I never met them, because they died before I was born. My dad used to listen to a lot of stuff like Shania Twain and bought DVDs of big concerts. So I grew up with Cher and Madonna. My mom listened to rock bands like Pearl Jam, Creed, Audioslave and Pink Floyd.

And because of that, I started playing drums when I was 12; I got a small drum kit. 

My parents were always kind of like, “If you want to do it, that’s fine, it’s a hobby”. I played drums for two years, but I got a bit bored with it. Later on, I picked up a guitar, and then I started DJing at 16, but I was always listening to everything, from indie to rock to electronic to early dubstep. And I was online a lot. I got a computer pretty early, when I was 12 or 13. So from then on, I was always with earphones and an iPod, researching music. Then a friend lent me some decks for a bit when I was 15 or 16, and I got super addicted to them. So for two years, I was learning to DJ for two to three hours a day after school. Everything was some kind of novelty for me, whether it was techno or tech house, whatever was going on. 

When I moved to Europe, I downloaded Ableton, and I started playing around with that. But what I was producing was mainly techno or house, four-to-the-floor stuff, but always with a kind of collage approach. I would use a lot of samples and play around with them. I never managed to properly learn music theory. The friends who knew music theory would sometimes question why I used certain sounds. But I just liked them, I didn’t like to over-analyse. 

During Covid, I got back into listening to pop, and that brought new influences into what I do. I felt that I had been hyper-focused on club sounds for a few years, and when I stepped away from that, I realised that there were so many things I’d missed out on. I have too many interests. I never approach making music with the intention of creating a club track or an experimental one specifically. Nowadays, I’m working with a vocalist called Monstera Black, and that has also helped me to move beyond just club and functional music, allowing me to open up. Now I’m trying to focus more on the technical aspects of production.

Because you also produce for other people, right?

I produce with friends, which is more of a collaboration. With Chantal, for example, we would sometimes go to the studio together. She would send me a draft of her idea, and I’d expand on it, leading to a bit of back and forth between us. That’s what I’m most excited about at the moment because I feel like I’m listening to a lot of pop and trap nowadays, and I’m more comfortable doing that right now. I’m mainly DJing other people’s music, or some of the edits I’ve started doing, but there’s an interesting contrast there because sometimes I find it hard to just sit down and listen to club music. It’s become quite challenging for me to find tracks that I want to play, so I end up doing a lot of research. 

You also do this bootleg series. 

Two more releases in that series are ready now. I’ve just figured out the artwork because I work with a friend of mine, Rafael Messias from Brazil, who’s now living here. We’re just trying to merge that visually, because I’m more interested in pictures than just graphic design alone.

I never had a proper CDJ setup at my house, so I always have this four-track MIDI controller, and I use Traktor a lot. When I started mixing, I would always mix with four channels, but it’s hard to do that with four CDJs in a club. So I started to be interested in combining four tracks played together and queuing them. But I didn’t know how to replicate this in a club context, so I decided just to record it and then play it in the club. And that opened up a lot of ideas. 

My friend Rafa has an insane knowledge of pop culture from the 2000s, so he’s always like, “Oh my God, listen to this old Victoria Beckham EP”. So it’s about getting old mixtapes from pop artists and throwing that on the club stuff that I like to play, because I find that they kind of coexist in the same space. I think the attitude toward commercial pop has changed, and pop has some of the most interesting productions; they have the budget to bring in a lot of underground artists or people I would never have imagined, like Total Freedom or Arca. 

Do you see yourself going in that direction, or would you want to stay more in the underground? 

I like the underground. I like DJing. I don’t think it’s something I would ever stop doing. It’s really great to DJ in Brazil. I feel more fun and comfortable there because it’s not like the club scene in Europe, it’s more underground and DIY. Here in Europe, it’s the same everywhere you go – there’s a club with a manager, everything is fixed. 

But at the same time, I’m getting more and more curious about production and being in the studio. So I see myself maybe co-producing for more people, and I also like remixing a lot or even watching catwalks and fashion ads, which is something I could see myself getting more into. I’m curious about different genres or ways of dealing with sound that I could expand on. I’m just learning how to do this because I think in Berlin, you kind of end up in a bubble. I’m 26 at the moment, so I’m still trying to understand how a lot of things work and how to get into spaces other than just clubs.

You are also a part of the DRY collective in Berlin.

Everyone is from different backgrounds—Italians, Germans, Venezuelans, Brazilians—and we have a similar taste in music. It’s diverse. We started curating lineups that we didn’t normally see at the parties here. I feel that Berlin has either house parties, straight techno ones, and then more bass and fast jungle stuff, but more experimental or eclectic DJs such as Ziur, DJ Marcelle and Cassius Select are lacking. We’re trying to bring DJs that we want to see, which can be tricky because sometimes they don’t bring in money for the club, but it’s okay. It’s a bit of a risk. 

Do you also feel connected to some sort of global scene?

I think that since Covid, I don’t go out as much as I used to. And I’ve realised that, especially with DJing, it’s about showing your face and talking with people. So I sometimes feel more connected online with what’s going on than in the local Berlin scene. In Berlin, people are really separated into their own niches, which is something that doesn’t happen in Brazil. Everyone is connected there, because economically it makes sense; everyone needs to help each other out. Every time I go back, I feel like I’m more connected with people. Musically, I think that by listening to a lot of things online, I can keep track of a lot of different scenes at the same time, which is interesting but sometimes overwhelming.

It seems that with Covid, a whole generation stopped going out, and it continued after the end of the pandemic. 

For me, it was more that before I had more energy to go out, to release energy, and to meet people. But during Covid, my friendships and relationships got stronger. We hang out in someone’s house and play video games. It can be very intense to go out in Berlin, taking drugs and not sleeping, but mainly just the energy you give out. I think sometimes it’s heavier than I realised. After Covid, the first time I went out, I was like, “Oh, my God, I’m so drained”, even though I got home at 3 am, you know. So I had to think about how much energy I was willing to give to this. But everyone has their own reasons. It’s also got more expensive in the past two years, so I think people are more selective about when they go out. 

And in terms of music, how do you search for new music to listen to? What are your sources? 

Nowadays I try to explore the discographies of artists, so I’ve been listening to a lot of old M.I.A. records and George Michael’s discography—it’s really random. I’ve been collecting music for a long time, so sometimes I just put stuff on shuffle, and when something sparks my interest, I’m like, ”Okay, let me check out the labels or connected artists”. With more pop, trap, or rock stuff, I go for the same labels, or discover releases on Instagram. For club music, I mainly use Soundcloud. I always go down online rabbit holes, with lots of tabs open, jumping from one playlist to the other, and then there’s also Bandcamp. 

I tried to get into vinyl some years ago, and collect it, but I that only lasted about a year until I’d had enough. It’s expensive, and most of the music I like is not pressed on vinyl anyway. 

The internet is a really interesting place to research music. People sometimes say that there aren’t so many great releases or that everything sounds the same, but I really don’t agree. It’s just a matter of researching and knowing where to look. There are some blogs like wandcamp, greattunes.net, or boomkat where you can find stuff or people’s playlists, including from artists that you like, even on Spotify. I also check NTS tracklists. I listen to music whenever I’m alone and always have earphones with me, so it’s kind of like having a randomised playlist all the time. I’m always curious and have a constantly growing list of albums that I need to check out.

Besides music, do you have any other hobbies or interests that you have been really into lately? 

I used to draw a lot, but not so much now. I probably drew more than I did music when I was younger. Taking pictures of buildings and copying them on paper. I also started making collages during Covid, picking up magazines, cutting them up and gluing them together. I also like to watch movies and go to galleries; I pretty much always need to be visually stimulated. But I also like to be outdoors a lot, which is why I’m planning to move from Berlin, because in the winter you’re kind of locked inside, and I always need to go for at least a 40-minute walk, otherwise I think I’d go crazy. 

Are you thinking I’m going back to Brazil?

I don’t think I could go back to living there because I’d need to move to Sao Paulo, which is where things happen musically and creatively, and I couldn’t live there. It’s too intense. I like that Berlin has a laid-back vibe, you can still, for now at least, have a part-time job without having to hustle all the time. Brazil is not doing so well at the moment, including economically. Unfortunately, there’s no funding for the arts there. The government really doesn’t see the value of underground cultures. It’s harder and more expensive for people to put on events. I see a lot of friends from Brazil who are really good artists, but they’re always struggling. Everything’s got more expensive. 

I guess Western Europe is this lone island with public funding and some sort of social security, but the rest of the world is not like this. 

My friends from Latin America come to Europe in the summer to tour. They play three gigs in one weekend because this is where the money and opportunities are. If you don’t do that, you’re not really recognised on the global music scene, which is still—come on, it’s 2024—concentrated here in Europe. I don’t know how this could be changed, but we all need validation from Europe to be someone.

I feel that a lot of Latin American artists need to be tough with European promoters, even regarding fees, because they always think they’re doing us a favour in some sense. Even though Latin sounds are growing and everyone’s copying them, they don’t ever think, “Oh, let’s bring over the artists we’re copying from”. 

But something I see a lot of my friends doing is having business conversations with Europeans, and when they have the chance, they speak up about it, just to raise a bit of awareness.

I sample a lot, and I work with different sounds. But at least when I’m doing it, I try to get a bit of the context of what I’m sampling. Sometimes people sample a funk acapella with extremely sexist lyrics, etc, but they don’t even check what the words mean. 

Interview Lucia Udvardyova
Photo Rafael Costa Messias