Artist To Artist: Alev Lenz & Jas Shaw

Alev’s rich musical palette, spans sophisticated pop to glacial vocal landscapes which merge seamlessly with Jas’ composite atmospherics. Rooted in a decade-long friendship and creative kinship which blossomed across cities, homes, and studios thealbum captures the essence of their shared experiences and artistic exploration.

“Bring Your Friends” is an reflection of the joy found in collaborative expression. With all that wonderful hyperbole in mind we thought it getting Jas and Alev to sit down and ask all the questions that mattered. Hot potatoes, Shakira, German compound words and metal workshops. Let’s dive in…

Jas:

So, we have been making music together for ages, I mean not like this but actually a bit like this. In a decade of trying to steer sound towards something that often doesn’t have a convenient word we have built up some good vocabulary.

Thinking back to the end of the session I had a bit of a laugh because there was one bit of vocal that I liked but you described as ‘potato’, which I got, or got enough that we resolved it. To make sure we have the same potato can you point to any other vocals or sounds that qualify as potato?

Alev:

I think Shakira described something in her voice as a potato once and that might be where I have it from actually but not sure 🙂 But in our conversation it was not so much hot potato in my mouth but more the texture of sound … a floury texture!

Farinaceous. Did you know this word? I would say that we communicate really well when it comes to sound, so much so that I made paintings of your words describing sound and frequencies 🙂

Jas:

I had to look it up. It’s just degrading, you speak like 3 languages and still have a better vocabulary in the only language that I can do. I would be kind of upset but it’s such a banger of a word as, ironically, it’s needed despite being a double. I might not have properly grasped it but it seems like a high falutin’ way of saying starchy? But, here’s the kicker, starchy doesn’t mean starchy anymore, in the starch sense of the word starchy. It’s a word that’s been so busy moonlighting for another concept that it’s lost it’s connection to starch. I almost feel sad for it but I guess it provides farinaceous with a break, so there’s that.

I’m a subscribed fan of German compound words, so pleasingly specific! As a native speaker have you got any favourites?

Alev: 

Lol I like that you thought I knew that word! I feel very clever now.  But I totally looked that up! It’s 4 languages btw:) But I don’t know that word in any. Mehlig … I think that’s what it is in German. I was curious if you knew the word as i had never heard it, that’s answered then ! Starchy also is milky. Not dry. somehow starchy is milky water ? Or a crisp stiff shirt.

And yes, remember the one I thought way back: Kabelsalat !?

A salad of cables .. when they’re all mangled up …

I like Heimweh. Which translates to homepain, as in being homesick.

But you also have used one of my all time faves yourself before in a project. Sollbruchstelle !!!

Jas:

Kabelsalat is a belter. You mentioned it before and it’s just as good this time around. Even after a tidy up it’s pure kabelsalat round here.

I recently went to see Room Full Of Teeth play and, as you know, they played your Planets record. I was struck by how textural and synthesisery they were with their vocals, and how they picked pretty sound-based pieces, some with no obvious sense of key. When you were recording did you have any odd situations where you needed to get one of them to vocalise in a different way but you were unsure how to express it politely?

Alev:

Hmmmmm… no I don’t think so – but I also am someone who unpacks (not necessarily conscious or on purpose ;)) their personality very quickly after meeting people; I don’t hold back much, so if you meet me and you like me we’re good – and if you don’t like my style, you’ll sense it quickly , it also won’t improve 🙂

As Teeth did like me and we were able to often work together and continue to do so – I didn’t have to adjust how I speak about my musical desires ever. They know me.

Equally I would say I am a generally polite person? Does that make sense ? Like when you met me all those years ago would you say ‘yes I got your vibe quickly ?’

Jas:

I think that’s pretty accurate and I like that a lot. I suspect I don’t do well with people who are all hints and games, I just don’t notice any of that subtext stuff which has probably come off as rude, or maybe dumb. It pains me deeply to say this, but I would probably not make a great spy.

I would also agree that you are polite, which is so valuable if you are going to be really upfront with what you want. I’ve met some artists who are totally no-filter, just demanding whatever they think of without any consideration and I thought that they were rude. Or maybe dumb. Oh.

I reckon you might be ok as a spy, what do you think?

Alev:

Oh, thank you 🙂 I’m glad you find me I’m polite. I really try and also think it’s really important. You can have no filter and express needs without being rude…

Hmmm … I always like to think I would be a good lawyer or detective ? I think for a spy you have to receive people well but also deceive … and my face annoyingly won’t and will not hide much of what I am thinking. I’m sure you’ve seen that happen before 😀 ?!

Jas:

Yeah, if this chat has taught me one thing it’s that we would make really shit spies.

You can actually play your piano but I don’t hear a pianoiness in your vocals. Do you think of piano notes when you sing or is singing a closed system? I only mention this because I once caught myself giving quite specific slide notes to a vocalist and realised that I was basing my comments on how I’d program a 303. Wasn’t sure if that was an ok thing to do so I kept quiet about it but worried later.

Alev:

Haha oh I don’t think either piano nor vocals I just think sound and then end up using whatever instrument I can easiest achieve the sound with …

Jas:

Yes, unusually so. You are a singer and pianist and I’m not saying that you don’t gravitate to these instruments but you are very comfortable moving away from the formats that they quietly nudge an artist towards. Like when we met you had been touring with a proper drums-and-guitar type band and you played me some drums-and-guitar type music and then we were chatting and in about 20 minutes we were watching a video of Múm and enthusing about metal percussion. And then a month later we were getting files from Samuli and you never looked back once, or not that I noticed anyway.

It’s pretty rare. Or perhaps going the whole hog is rare. It’s a very common and not entirely bad pattern but what usually happens is that people are all ‘rip up the rules’ at the start of an album session and then slowly they gravitate back to sounding like their last record. I don’t begrudge anyone this, they are trying to progress without losing the thread of themselves; it’s difficult. It’s rarely a linear process. However, it’s pretty great to see someone just swan off without fear, especially someone who doesn’t do so with all the I’m-so-radical trimmings.

Alev:

Ohhhhh thank you !! I’m so touched by these observations and it really says so much about how long we have known each other and seen each other work. Makes me truly happy.

No, I didn’t look back. I love making whatever sound the record needs, I love that the music can showcase (to listeners, but also to myself) where you are in life, which city even, what musicians you are meeting, who is informing the music and you as a person, how you are growing… sometimes the sound is also simply how it was able to get done in that moment. The music needs to be out… and whatever tools available at that moment, I will grab them and make a record.

Jas:

When singing, do you think that your monitoring is your primary feedback or do you pitch and intone by feel? I’m asking because I wonder if some of the very long frozen reverb things or looping that we do after you have recorded might be interesting to do as you record a vocal?

Alev:

I like a dry sound in my ears and also take one headphone off to hear the room. I strongly dislike reverb on my monitors as it gives the illusion of something that my vocal chords aren’t doing and I can’t control the vocals as I like to. What you hear outside will sound a lot better (with it without reverb) if I don’t hear reverb… it’s my very subjective opinion but I also think im right 🙂 Do you think I’m right ?

Jas:

I’m laughing at ‘I’m right’. I would normally side with you on these matters but I’m not sure that there’s a universal right here? Definitely you are right for you and that set up makes a lot of sense.

Alev:

Hehehe wait there isn’t a universal right :)?

Jas:

The problem with recording singers is that they are all great in the environment that they are comfortable in and unless you are a session singer or have a lot of studio experience it’s just not gonna be what the vocal booth is like. Like there’s normally room treatment so the room sounds dead, or weird. You have someone else’s headphones on and there’s pressure. Probably, there’s someone who looks like they don’t see a lot of daylight peering at you through glass. It’s not a vibe. So, I get that perhaps a nice hall reverb in the cans can give confidence.

I guess I can relate in that I would always flip out doing mixes in radio stations. They usually have small studio monitors and you don’t really feel the weight of the tracks but the fine detail of the percussion is really clear, so unless you have picked records with incredibly compatible grooves you are constantly bugging out about the endless fiddly clashes that you can hear. In a club, at 4am, on thuddy monitors that have seen plenty of nights the same mix locks in like a glove but at lunchtime, on tiny boxes, it’s a midrange crisis.

I’ve been in studios where they put up throws and even in one they had candles. I respect that but yuck. You don’t do any of that joss stick stuff in your studio right?

Alev:

Loool joss stick stuff … no candles are not good for the air and hence the singing! I guess what I mean is – always keep it dry and you can probably work in any environment… create it all in your head , listen via your bones behind your ear… hmmm I’m sure they have a name ?

Jas:

Oh yeah there’s those three tiny bones that amplify the sound from the eardrum. It’s like hammer, anvil, something else forgey? Ugh, first I get fired as a spy and now fired as a biologist or doctor. At this rate I’m going to have to fall back on the reliable profession of djing.

Alev:

Hahaha yes also fired as doc – I meant the one behind, not literally in the ear. In the ear yea that’s for hearing but the vibrations and stuff you can also hone into the skull …

I had to look this one up (before you think I know this term:)) it’s the mastoid bone I mean…

Jas: You sent me a picture of your dressing room in a concert hall a while back and I remember being really struck with how odd it looked. So clean and stark. No band stickers, no Redbull fridge, no sharpie renderings of penises. You come from a band background, were you at all tempted to draw a knob on the pristine wall of that concert hall dressing room?

Alev:

That must have been the Elbphilharmonie!! I wouldn’t dare or dream to draw on the walls there , it’s also in Germany and I am terrified of breaking house rules 😉

And same with the band. I think I was probably cleaning the place rather than tagging penises on walls. I feel however that my rioting phase might set in with old age so I have some fun to look forward to… and I’ll definitely be tagging vulvas for that matter.

Tell me please the most outrageous wreaking you have caused ?

Jas:

Tagging vulvas in the Elbphilharmonie is too, too perfect. Yes please and thank you!

As for me, I’m not a natural wrecker, you know this. That said, I’ve spent a lot of time close to wreckers, the nice ones anyway. Sometimes they take you on these unpredictable adventures and I always felt very pleased to be included.

Do the classical lot drag you to the afters sometimes?

Alev

Lol they did;) but I’m neither wrecker not ‘after’ sooooooo… I’m rating the pillows !

Jas:

Your Milky Way record was really interesting because you really made the classical musicians into collaborators. They were working into your pieces but not in a prescriptive way and you went to impressive lengths to maintain their input right to the end, like they were sending notes on the mix. It was the polar opposite of loading up a string sample pack and pasting the chord midi into a new channel. How did you connect with the musicians that you pulled in?

Alev:

I’m so happy to hear ‘you went to impressive lengths to maintain their input’ . That’s a huge compliment and I’m glad that came across. Because I really tried and did my best. I was connected to them before as friends and when the opportunity presented itself I asked my very talented bunch of friends ,that I had on speed dial during those month really , if they were up to collaborating 🙂 and they were! It was so fun and mixing to me is so important so it was very important to have their input all the way.

Do you think mixing is a crucially important creative part of making a record? Because I really do!

Jas:

Yeah, mixing is a weird one because at one end it’s a pretty mundane topping and tailing job. At the other end you are trying to get a record to feel right and sometimes that requires a balance that’s not just making everything as tidy and audible as possible. Sometimes you end up making changes that are kind of outside your brief, like muting stuff or adding stuff. And interventions like that are potentially read as rude, so you need to bracket it with endless caveats. Plus, you are trying to make a number of people happy without it sounding like a process of averaging.

Giving everyone a voice on Milky Way was laudable and actually worked really well because they were all making sensible comments rather than just ‘more me’.

Alev:

Hahaha ‘more me’

I love that when you mix that you are bold and sometimes will mute an entire track and say ‘I wasn’t really feeling it’…

But you did say that this works well and with ease between us because you know I would tell you (or my face would ;)) if it bothered me, I’m not worried to tell you and am also equally not fussed about stuff maybe being cut by you – I am not because you have a wonderful ear and a musical integrity that I admire and love – but you said you can’t really do that with too many projects. Is that still the case or are people easing up a bit ?

Jas:

That’s kind but no, sometimes people are very not-charmed by my ‘maybe the mix is nicer without this thing that you spent ages on?’ approach.

That record was an all women production and it seemed like that was largely co-incidental? And you worked on Anoushka’s last record. Has this shit just gone, y’know, too far? Like women and stuff, right?

Alev:

We have a secret vagina club and it will swallow the world any day now … but psssst…

Jas:

I for one welcome etc.

This is something that I see reflected in both of us, thinking about it. And it’s been there right from the start. Your process of working with people is less to polish up what’s there and more to change the balance of how the thing works. All of the people that you loop in end up tilting the project in a meaningful way rather than just filling in pre-sketched out parts.

Alev:

That’s also a really nice compliment. Thank you and I’m so glad it is that way. I think the end product is really just the end, all of how we get there is how we spend our days. That’s life and that’s the part you want to get right … so everyone involved is meaningful and should be , as you spend time together, and their personhood should be included and come out…

You have always had a very meaningful part in most of my recent projects. First up , thank you for that. But also can you see that yourself too? Can you see yourself in the music / the outcome ?

Jas: Definitely! When I’m working on something sometimes I’m in stay-in-your-lane mode and sometimes I kind of pretend it’s my record. I don’t think either are bad approaches but I find it quite hard to work in a middle ground. I’m probably kind of a handful in the second mode which is exactly not what most people want when they are exhausted, at the end of a long album production process.

Alev

I’m elated when the album is done. I’m so happy and relaxed and full of energy in the mixing stage ! Is that unusual?

Jas

Yeah, or at least I think it goes both ways. Sometimes a record feels like it drops into your lap, like ours, right? Piece of piss. It felt like it wanted to be made. I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you that it’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s just hours of trying stuff and being frustrated and picking yourself back up and having another go, right? It erodes your confidence and is work, proper work. I always have to remind myself that the smooth ones are often a circuitous payoff from those days where you persisted despite the feeling that the way to make the tune work was deliberately hiding from you. I guess that’s a long winded way to say yeah, often by the end of a recording session people are pretty spent.

Jas:

I was just thinking about the time that you put out your songs as sheet music and how you said you felt that this democratised access to the music by letting people participate in it; like they can just sing it and it’s theirs in some way. As someone who doesn’t read music I felt charmed but also excluded from this. Would you make guitar tablature so that guitarists can shred your songs?

Alev:

Ohhhhh that’s a nice idea ! It’s stupid tbh I didn’t include that in the scores. That would have been easy… sorry!

I had the notation ready from the session with Roomful of Teeth and just put them out there – as all my touring plans were axed by covid. I wanted the music to at least travel in some way. But my main wish is for my work to travel by oral tradition. Something that is so easy to remember, so joyful or meaningful or helpful  to sing together or  alone that the song can travel with anyone… the songs you can also really learn by heart and use the notations just for structure and lyrics !?

How could that work with fully electronic music you think? Is there a way for an oral tradition or might that be entirely reserved for verbal Songwriting ?

Jas:

Don’t be sorry. Putting scores out was a nice touch and the fact that I can’t read the dots doesn’t diminish that.

This is going to sound trite coming after your description of how your songs fit into the ancient oral tradition but, oh god I already regret this, I think the equivalent in electronic music is djing? I know, let’s just see if this goes anywhere. First we need to park all the current dj baggage, really, all of it. If we just go back to basics, if you will, then you have people who take other people’s music and perform with it make it their own at that moment. I was getting a bit giddy with this and was just about to declare CDJs the modern acoustic guitar but I have just remembered that in some instances the club scene isn’t as adorable as I like to imagine.

Alev: Lolz, no further questions.

Jas:

I live near a massive metal warehouse that’s only used for a few weeks of the year, it’s a farming thing. Since I moved here I had the idea of setting up some sort of PA in there and capturing the sound of the huge, ugly metallic space. My assumption was that it would be drums but perhaps dreamy vocals clanking around in there would contrast more interestingly?

Alev :

I would go for brass! And strings…And a harp And yes def vocals so I can join the fun. When is this :)?

Jas:

Not winter, there’s no heating. And not the end of summer, that’s when they use it. So maybe sometime in the summer?

I’ll butter the farmer up and see if I can get in there to scout it out. I’ve got these cool non-speakers that you bolt onto things and they shake the sound directly onto the material. I wonder if we could bolt some of those onto one side of the warehouse and then contact mics onto the other side and make a huge metal delay box with musicians in it? It’s not easy to convince people to get on a train out of London but ‘you wanna go in the huge, clanking metal delay box?’ is pretty compelling I think?

Alev:

Omg I LOVE it, how is this not compelling. I will rent a car and drive up whoever wants to join?

Debut Album Bring Your Friends is set for release Feb 23rd. Pre-Order here