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Music

Talking Tats, Feelings, and Wayne Coyne Collaborations with Singer/DJ Alison Wonderland

Plus listen to the Sydney-based artist's debut LP, 'Run,' which drops today.

You could say that a night out with Alison Wonderland is a blast in a glass: the pint-sized DJ and vocalist is just down for a good time which makes her status as an up-and-coming DJ an ideal vocation. As a classically-trained cellist and producer, Alison is also all too familiar with the music world. The Sydney-based blonde-haired beauty (whose locks sometimes go pink and blue) will make her US debut at Coachella this week. Inspired by The Knife and LCD Soundsystem, Alison has always been drawn to emotional, electronic music—something she’s carried into her own songs with honest, raw vocals over all original beats. Following the release of her 2014 Calm Down EP, today Alison drops her debut album Run on 4.7 (listen to it in full below). We spent a night out in NYC with the DJ where she took us through her tattoos, tomboy style, and the moment she realized she didn’t deserve to be treated like shit anymore.

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Noisey: What’s your style on-stage in comparison to your every day style?
Alison Wonderland: My every day style is what I perform in as well. For example, I love t-shirts—I have a huge t-shirt collection. I love going to vintage stores and buying t-shirts. I love hand-screen printed tees from this place in Australia caused Di$COUNT UNIVERSE in Melbourne. I wear either vintage t-shirts or Adidas t-shirts. I’m so comfortable when I’m moving around onstage with them, so it’s one less thing I have to worry about. I’ve always been a tomboy. I’ve never dressed too feminine. I feel weird wearing a dress. I’ll wear Adidas Superstars or YRU’s platform sneakers, which I wear all the time.

Those platform sneakers are some Spice Girls shit. I love that. I thought I heard cello on your EP. Am I right?
Yeah! There’s cello on “Space.” That’s me playing in my bedroom. I’ve been playing since I was a really little kid. Then I went to Germany and studied with a professor. I was going to be a professional.

That’s so cool! I was wondering if you were a cellist too, since you seem to do everything in your music yourself. I was a cellist for a decade. Will you play cello at your live shows?
Awesome. What I do live really depends on how this record goes. I like to use my decks as an instrument when I play and then I’ll start adding stuff in. To me, my music has always been an organic thing. I’ve been producing for ages—I actually produced under a different name for a long time as White Fang. I got a few plays on [BBC] Radio 1, but I never pushed it. That’s how I learned how to record—in my bedroom. It was never supposed to be anything. It was just cheap therapy. It was the same thing with DJing. I got quite nerdy with it—at the time, I didn’t find anything that spoke to me in music, but I knew I didn’t want to be a cellist. I never grew up watching DJs, but I found a thrill in turning those instruments. You can actually move a crowd and take them on a journey. I feed on that shit.

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Do you know Diplo personally? I know he’s a big fan of yours.
I’ve met him a couple of times, but I do a lot of work with people that are on Mad Decent on my record. I co-produced my track with Djemba Djemba, AWE, and Lido. I love Mad Decent, Fool’s Gold and all of those guys—I think they’re doing great songs.

How does it feel to be playing your first show in the U.S. at Coachella?
Oh my God! That is a dream. Honestly, that’s the biggest thing that’s happened to me in my whole entire life. When I found out I was playing it, it didn’t hit me until I explained to my dad what it was because it was such a dream. I just didn’t expect it. It’s just crazy because in Australia I’m at a festival level already and headline shows, but here, people just kind of started noticing me. My mom is coming too. I’ve got some really cool stuff planned for the show. It’s overwhelmingly cool that Coachella is my first cool. Honestly, I just want to put on a really good show. If people love it they love it, if they don’t they don’t. I just want to go as hard as I can. Holy shit. Coachella. What the fuck.

How did that Wayne Coyne collaboration happen on “U Don’t Know?”
I had made this song with Djemba Djemba, but someone sent it to Wayne Coyne randomly and he was down to sing on it and sent vocals back. It was super weird, but super cool. I think it’s really awesome when artists from different genres get together and collaborate. I think it’s super important. Just add something different to a song. For real.

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You have a ton of tattoos. What are some of the stories behind them?
I have 12 maybe. My first one was when I was 16. It’s really bad. It’s the worst tattoo in the world and I’m not going to tell you what it is. The only people that know what that tattoo is see me without clothes on. That one [points to tattoo on arm] is ‘Graceland’—you know Paul Simon’s Graceland. It was a stick and poke. I got a moon with my friend who is a producer named DJ Hoodboi. We got one together as a friend thing. Then I have a key on my arm. There’s an ‘M’ for Molly, my dog. When you look at it upside down, it’s a ‘W’ for Wonderland. I actually have an LCD Soundsystem quote on my leg that says "Dance Yrself Clean."

There’s a lot of emotion that shines through on your EP. Did that translate through the album too?
“I Want U” and “Cold,” which are on the EP, I actually kept on the record. I kept “Cold” on there because that song means a lot to me. It was written about a pretty pivotal moment in my life. I actually recorded it as an iPhone voice memo and I kept it as a final vocal. Whenever I listen to it, it takes me back to a moment. It was a defining moment for me; it was self-realization that I wasn’t being treated the way I was treated. No one deserves to be treated like shit. That’s the day I decided to move on. Every song on my record that’s about to come out is about something that means a lot to me. It was weird—every lyric on there came out straight away. The first words I wrote were the ones I kept. It was really important for me to keep it real. A lot of my record is written about my time in Los Angeles. It was the first time I was really in America. It was about life, observing the people I met and the way that people acted towards me throughout the year. “U Don’t Know” is actually about people treating you like you’re this naïve girl, but in fact, I’m quite clued in. It’s just about really learning about who’s really there for you and who’s not. This whole record is written about my relationships with love, friendship, the industry, Los Angeles, Sydney, and music. Everything I wrote was from a really honest place and that’s the only way to do it—it’s to let your art speak for you.

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Alison Wonderland Tour Dates April 11: Indio, CA Coachella Music & Arts Festival

April 15: Seattle, WA Q Nightclub

April 18: Indio, CA Coachella Music & Arts Festival

April 24: Chicago, IL The Mid

May 1: New York, NY Webster Hall

May 2: Miami, FL Grand Central

May 8: Toronto, ON The Hoxton

May 9: Montreal, QC NewsSpeak

May 14: Denver, CO Bluebird Theater

May 15: San Francisco, CA 1015 Folsom

May 16: Los Angeles, CA El Rey Theatre

Ilana Kaplan is a writer living in BK! Follow her on Twitter.