By: Staff
Prepare to step into a bold new era of music with AUNCE, the avant-pop artist redefining boundaries in sound and storytelling. Her latest single, “Beep Beep”, is here, and it’s more than just a track; it’s an experience.
With its intricate production, compelling vocal textures, and thought-provoking themes, “Beep Beep” offers a glimpse into AUNCE’s unique ability to weave sonic grit with irresistible hooks. Produced by Aunce, with additional production by Chris Hyson, (Snow Poet, Jordan Rakei), the track showcases her mastery of blending avant-garde electronica with pop sensibilities. Additional percussion by Riki Gooch, a mix by TJ Allen, and mastering by Guy Davie elevate the single to a meticulously crafted soundscape.
This release marks the first from her highly anticipated EP, The Evergreen Collection, a project that promises to traverse diverse sound worlds while exploring what it means to be alive in today’s complex reality. With each single set to be released over the coming months, AUNCE is ready to cement her place as a force in the electronic and avant-pop music scene.
Dive into the world of “Beep Beep”, now available on all streaming platforms—and stay tuned for our exclusive interview with AUNCE, where she unpacks the inspiration, artistry, and bold vision behind this exciting new chapter.
We also had the chance to catch up with AUNCE for an exclusive interview in "The Cage" Music Blog and we were excited to share it with you.
Here’s how it went:
Begin Interview
Hello AUNCE, we’re thrilled to have you for this interview! We’ve had a blast diving into your music and exploring your work, and now we’re even more excited to learn more about you, both as an artist, and as a person.
What inspired the name AUNCE for your artist persona? How does it capture the connection you want to build with your fans?
I’d been trying to find a new artist name that felt right in my bones for a while. I’d been working under another name – EDIE (my middle name) – for a few years, but it just didn’t feel right anymore. I wanted to land on something that felt open enough to be an umbrella for me to do all kinds of things under – solo, collaborative and collective. I wanted something that could be free of association such as gender, trend or genre. I had a few ideas, and sat with each one for a couple of days, (sometimes weeks), to see if it still felt right…and after a day or two most of them evaporated or didn’t conjure the right images or feelings for me.
An old friend and I had been sharing ideas for a couple of months, and one day he said out of nowhere “AUNCE” and I loved the look and sound of it – it was so open with so many vowels and somehow futuristic and free. It just felt like something I could grow with. So, I sat with it for another little while to see how it felt, and it stuck. I then started to play and explore meanings and found that -a(u)nce is the old English suffix that indicates states or processes, attitudes or activities. It chimed in nicely with my intention for it to be an umbrella for multiple creative projects. I had to be patient to find the right thing (so too did my friends who were great sounding boards – thank you!).
And so, for listeners, I’d love it to feel like something fresh, new and stimulating – a gateway into exploring new sounds, worlds and ideas that might be at once beautiful, uncomfortable, rewarding, challenging or soothing. And I guess, if this project encourages me to keep challenging myself to take creative risks, maybe that might help others in similar spaces to take a leap too?…
Can you tell us about the inspiration that sparked the creation of "Beep Beep"? How did the song evolve from concept to completion?
It went through a couple of iterations. I go through bursts of trying to challenge myself to make polyrhythmic beats that feel like they’re falling over, but creating enough consistent pulse to hold on to. So, I started with the kick and percussion. My friend Riki Gooch (Trinity Roots/Cave Circles) really liked the beat and he recorded some intricate percussion, which was super cool with its lofi and crunch, yet super intricate rhythmic detail. Then, I remember messing around with my ex’s Behringer Model D during lockdown in NZ, and found the main synth sound, which felt quite obnoxious, persistent and bold – just like the feeling of someone creepily staring at you, and then came the rhythmic bass sound, also from the Model D. From there, I added some of the vocal pedals (the “beep beep” sound) and vocal harmony blooms, and the vibe was pretty clear from then on. It was actually an instrumental for a long time, but I always sensed a lead vocal would help provide a through line in amongst the chaos…So, it sat on my hard drive for a year or so. The memory of it kept bugging me and I knew I needed to get it out again. So I revisited it whilst I was working on my PhD.
The vibe is pretty unsettling and tense, and so I wanted it to end with some sort of big release, or sonic leap into the unknown. I used some mellotron strings, which I’ve always LOVED for their other worldly, gritty and nostalgic sound, layered with a few other string samples, processed further and composed the end. It made me feel like it was a flying leap over the edge of a canyon, a sense of freedom from restraint and humdrum patterns, and so I responded to that vibe with the adlib vocal.
Again, it sat on my hard drive for a little bit longer, while I did some travel to Brazil and then France. I had these tunes that were (in my mind) 80-90 % finished, but having had big life changes, and feeling far and a bit isolated from my creative communities, I was finding it hard to have the objectivity and motivation to finish them. So, I asked the wonderful London based Chris Hyson (Snow Poet) to help guide me to the finish line. We spent a lot of the time laughing on remote sessions, and he took everything to the next level with some really great additional production and edit ideas. I know it can be hard to allow someone into your production as a self-produced artist, but I trusted Chris’s taste and he has a really great awareness of producer-artist dynamics, which put me at ease.
The themes in "Beep Beep" touch on self-sexualization and objectification in the digital age. What compelled you to explore these topics, and how did they shape the sound and mood of the track?
Well, from the start, the vibe (quite unconsciously) gave me the sense you get when you’re feeling someone’s unsolicited, lascivious stare on your body. And the “beep beep” vocal idea seemed fitting (cat calling etc). So it was always about the male gaze.
At the time of revisiting it during the PhD, I was deep in reading lots of papers that explored the default expectations that listeners have when they hear a female voice in a song, such as “she’s just the vocalist”, or an expectation of that vocalist to be attractive and present her body in a particular way, and how detrimental and diminishing those assumptions can be to women identifying artists, composers & producers who are badasses making great work. And of course, all of that is inherently connected to the male gaze and also entrenched in the music industry since 1950s…but rather than improving, its all being replicated, perpetuated and evolving online now, often disguised as empowerment…
Around the same time I was noticing producer/artist friends and contemporaries, and also my favourite major artists, really start to up the intensity of the sexiness of their posts to promote their music. Hell, I even tried it myself to see what would happen! and had more comments and DMs, voice notes, than anything else I’d post. It works to get cut through! But, it felt really weird in my body – I love feeling sensual, sexy and I believe inhabiting our bodies is so important in whatever way works for people – but to do it to feed an algorithm on a platform that was destroying people’s mental health, shaping our thought processes and preferences, all for profit, it just didn’t feel right, or sexy (to me). It felt dark and inauthentic. So, I started to read more about the algorithms, which have been majorly criticised for favouring posts of attractive pics of people. I’ve been encouraged to “play the game” if I want my music to be heard, but I believe that time spent playing the game is time spent not imagining a better future for artists.
And then there’s another macro layer of observing the impact of social media on our thought processes, agency and mental health. We all know these apps make crazy profit from stealing our attention (and imagination), discombobulating our brain chemistry, are detrimental to attention, learning and development, and majorly affect (slowly but surely) our perception of the world, and our place in it. Yet, pressure is put on artists to have consistent social media success and good stats in order to be seen as valuable to the industry and even valuable to fans. I think it pushes people into reeeeally weird spaces, impacts the music that people are making and also why they’re making it. It also really impacts relationships and connections – both personally and professionally. It’s really impacting the fabric of society. And, I sense, that its gone a bit haywire and isn’t really doing much good for anyone anymore, (other than those making money from it). I feel a bit boring and gloomy for saying this…and I see the positives in it connecting people. But for me, the negatives outweigh the positives.
Your voice is such a defining element of your music. How do you approach using it as both a melodic and textural tool in your production?
I’ve always really loved the freedom of using my voice as a texture or tool – it just feels really right to me. And I think since I was a kid, I’ve always paid more attention to the sound of voices and vocal expression, than to words. During my undergrad at University of York, I played around with extended vocal technique, and worked with some electroacoustic projects, and I guess I loved choral music for the texture, harmony and beauty, rather than the texts…and so, I explored quite a lot of weird vocal sounds and keep doing so! Learning production was super cool as I could manipulate these sounds to become something even more crazy, or beautiful, or visceral…also, when I started out I couldn’t afford any gear, so using my voice (recorded into the laptop microphone) was the easiest and cheapest way to create ideas, and it was all I needed to begin...
I think for a long time I got stuck in thinking I either have to make a cohesive collection of songs with words and melodies, or instrumentals with voice as texture…but I’ve realised how silly, and perhaps gendered, that dichotomy is. Why not have both in the same EP or album if they’re part of the same world? I think as listeners we’re so intrinsically clued into vocal expression, that we can intuit meaning from vocals without words, and sometimes words can even truncate meaning. But sometimes, a song calls for a lead melody with words, and that’s great too. There’s so much scope – why pigeonhole ourselves, or other artists.
With "Beep Beep" being described as bold and boundary-pushing, what kind of first impression do you hope it leaves on listeners as they step into this new era of your music?
As a first impression - I’m hoping it piques curiosity! I hope it’s a sonic experience that feels in some way novel or interesting and hopefully visceral. Like hanging out in another world for 3 minutes. It might not be comfortable for everyone, and it definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste. But i’m hoping it’s immersive, provokes imagination, and that the subject matter can resonate.
Nature, urban environments, and human behavior all inspire your work. Can you share a specific moment or scene from life that recently influenced a track in The Evergreen Collection?
Since I was a kid, I feel like I’ve always sensed the vibe of places, things, atmospheres. Maybe all kids do, and we kind of become tuned out as we get older and busier. But, I think music has allowed me to maintain the ability and actually, it has become stronger. I’m not sure if its sensitivity or intuition, to some it might sound a bit woowoo. And it’s not always helpful – sometimes it’s easier and more practical to not sense anything haha. So now, I think I tend to observe the world around me, get a sense of what the energy is around a particular place or issue or trend, by listening to what’s being said, how its being said, what’s not being said, how a place feels or looks, (its really hard to put into words), and without it being super conscious, it tends to crystallise when I’m making music. And often I don’t know what a piece is about until quite a while after, which is super common for artists I think. I guess Beep Beep is an example of me processing what I was observing of the digital age and the weird exploitative pressures of it…and it came out as it did.
In a different vain, there’s one track on the EP that I made after spending a week consistently meditating in the south island of Aotearoa. I remember opening my eyes and taking in an amazing view of mountains and lakes, and feeling like my whole system had dropped into another place, and felt really needing to create. So, when I got home, I sat down and wrote this ambient track in about an hour without any friction or difficulty. It just flowed. And so the track reminded me of how the constant noise and distraction of modern life limits our creative imagination and ability to access that magic space where things can flow, that is so often gifted when we connect back into nature (ourselves).
You’ve reimagined the role of a music producer, especially as a woman in this space. How has your journey in production shaped your sound and artistic philosophy?
In so many ways, and this interview will be so long if I go into it in full. I think learning how to produce has enabled me to explore my creativity in ways I had no idea existed. I could take my intense vivid connection to and love for sound and use production to explore it, along with everything else I was observing. I think we all need outlets to keep our internal world from becoming blocked or stagnant, and without production, I’m not sure what it would have been, other than maybe singing someone else’s music, or working with another producer who had too much control over what I wanted to make. But I was lucky enough to kind of stumble into production…I am so grateful to my ex who introduced me to Ableton. It was like a playground. I think at the time (2012 or something) the contemporary rolemodels were Bjork, Tokimonsta and Holly Herndon. There weren’t as many back then as there are now. Those role models were key, and through them I discovered the innovators like Delia Derbyshire, Suzanne Ciani, Sylvia Massey and it blew my young 20 something mind to see women in control of sound with technical prowess…but these weren’t the practitioners that were most visible, who were part of the canon, because….well, I think we know why..
So, I began to see how weird it was that production was so often associated with a male genius sitting at the helm, and wondered how many diverse stories, sounds and voices could explode through if there were new narratives that shook up what a producer is, looks like, sounds like. I think now producer can mean many things – the person overseeing overall creative vision of a project, or a producer who is also a record engineer who does everything, or a co-writer producer etc etc there are lots of permutations. However, when I ran workshops in Aotearoa for women identifying producers, even though so many of them were doing some kind of producing in the ways I’ve just outlined, very few of them felt worthy to call themselves producers…there was a major lack of confidence or self-trust in their practice. So, in these workshops we decided to explore what a producer could be. We intentionally steered away from it being a course on a DAW, and we gave the participants no goals to meet, no element of competition between groups to produce something fast or loud (which is often the case in production workshops), just space, time and safety to explore their unique gifts as the incredible creative powerhous producers they are. Some groups made technical things fast, others spent time talking and sharing. It kind of showed us that we need to imagine new ways of seeing and teaching production to enable more stories to be heard and shared.
You’ve worked with collaborators like Chris Hyson and Riki Gooch on this project. How do these partnerships impact the final outcome of your music, and what do you look for in a collaborator?
Chris and I were talking about this the other day – there are people who either spin and expand the energy we place in the room, or close the energy down. This I think is true for all human interactions. So, after trial and error, I’m now looking for that spin and expand energy before I agree to collaboration…and also in all of my relationships, and make sure its reciprocal. I think feeling that your abilities are seen and trusted allows us to approach collaborations with a sense of openness. Sometimes yes we need to demonstrate our competence and abilities, but having a felt sense of trust makes the process so much more free and creative. Being micromanaged or feeling under the thumb is my worst nightmare and it takes 90% more energy to do a great job…
The upcoming EP, The Evergreen Collection, is described as both diverse and rewarding. What threads or themes connect the songs for you as a cohesive body of work?
Sonically they’re pretty diverse, with my voice and vocal production probably being the obvious sonic threads between all of them. It was intentional as I wanted to embrace sonic and creative agency, avoiding pigeonholing myself (as I discussed above). Thematically, I think they all show different facets of me processing and tussling with the major themes of our time (as I perceive them) – digital identities, anthropocentric hubris destroying nature, peoples value being bound to relentless productivity, reconnecting to the fact we are nature, the power and importance and generative nature of love….
The idea of gifting royalties for each single is such a fresh approach. What inspired this decision, and how do you hope it redefines the process of releasing music?
It took me a little while to work out why I felt weird and ill at ease with releasing music…and in the last year or so the penny dropped. I was finding that the current systems of release sort of push artists into this individualistic space in competition with other artists doing the same thing. And yet, the process of making a record, more often than not, isn’t just about one person – it requires a team of people, it involves a huge history of influence and inspiration, inspiration from nature, from friends, from family, from books, poems, painting…yet, the system doesn’t encourage anyone to really talk to those in a way that could be really connective. I love seeing how things intersect, and flow on from each other...it makes a lot of sense to me. Also, I feel a lot of gratitude towards everything that has inspired me, everyone and everything that has enabled me to have a life with music, and I want to stamp that into the music mechanically. And also, for some artists, the music they make isn’t about them – they’re maybe the vehicle to put inspiration into musical form, but music comes from some other, more spiritual place, and so…the “here’s my new album and 100 headshots of me” feels at odds with the process. But, there’s pressure to be the face/personality/person to front the music. So, I thought it’d be cool to explore new ways to honour that.
At the moment, there aren’t too many direct ways to send royalties to people or places that aren’t signed up to royalty collection agencies as publishers or artists. But Earth Percent have done a very cool job of making it easy to mark ‘The Earth’ as a co-writer, just as you would another artist or publisher, and automatically royalties flow to the charity, and from there, they fund initiatives working in conservation, climate justice, policy change, energy transition and greening the music industry. Music is nature, we are nature, we’re constantly inspired by it, and we literally couldn’t record and distribute our music without…so it was a no brainer to mark the earth a co-writer. So, I decided to gift 20% of Beep Beep royalties to Earth Percent. My dream would be to see more mechanisms like this being set up, easy to use and direct, without the need for intermediaries. There are some cool things happening…but its still quite fragmented and not super easy for charities etc to be involved in , so it will be up to me to donate royalties from my earnings (from traditional agencies).
As someone deeply engaged with avant-pop and electronic music, how do you navigate blending experimental elements with accessibility in your sound?
I try not to think about it too much when I’m making…I follow my nose, and if I’m stimulated by it, or feel like there’s a vibe I’ll follow the flow and allow it to be what it wants to be. I think we’ve all got particular tastes that are informed by decades of listening, experience and memories, and mine happen to converge around this particular intersection. I’ve listened to and sung some quite experimental stuff, and so my position on the continuum is quite left of centre for some people, but not at all left compared to others, in fact it could be really boring for those who’ve spent years listening or playing free experimental improv!…I find the subjective nature of music super fascinating, and our capacity to hear more the more we listen and engage, because our audio cortex (and other bits of the brain involved in experiencing music) are always developing and evolving.
How does your academic background, including a PhD in Music Production, influence your creative process, especially in moments of experimentation?
The PhD gave me space and time to develop my craft, especially during lockdowns – it gave me an anchor and focal point, and I was also able to dive deeper into issues and ideas surrounding culture, production and creativity. However, I think when studying particular threads for three years, it can sometimes warp your perception of your subject, and you can’t see the forest for the trees (Dunning Kruger effect). It was a creative practice PhD, so I made a lot of music, which was great, and had to reflect on the process, which was surprisingly insightful and I think developed my practical abilities. I think mostly it was a time to develop confidence and competence, which enables you to feel more free and open to experiment. I’ve always been a massive fan of happy accidents, and have always enjoyed diving into unknowns so that didn’t change, but maybe the PhD helped me feel more confident in owning my process as valid experiences. The PhD also was an extra driver to build more community and encourage conversation between women identifying producers. I learned a huge amount from that.
AUNCE, thank you so much, we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us!
End Interview
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We’re happy to have shared AUNCE’s exciting journey with you and uncovered such inspiring insights about their creative process.
Now, click the links below to experience their incredible work firsthand!
Check out this latest release and listen to more on Spotify & YouTube
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