Vocalist and musician AVEC is an artist to keep on your radar. After the release of her 2015 EP Heartbeats, she signed to Earcandy Records, proving successful in generating her own musical language, where her imagination and ideas come together to create a mystical and sweet-toned soundscape.
We caught up with AVEC to chat about her artistic concepts, as well as her upcoming performance at Eurosonic Noorderslag Festival on 19th January 2018, alongside artists such as Dillon, Sigrid and Snavs.
Tell us about you, how long have you been producing music? What did inspire you to start?
I started writing my own songs when I was around 10 years old – at this point, there were just the lyrics, no instrumental. When I was 14 I taught myself to play the guitar and started writing my songs in combination with the guitar, recorded them and uploaded some of them to SoundCloud.
I always loved music and loved to read and write. I grew up with a ton of really good music and started making music at a very young age, but it never came to my mind, that it actually could be more than just a hobby. So, there was never really an inspiration to start this whole thing, more like “I’ll write my own songs for myself“ and now I am living my dream – it is crazy.
The music industry is super competitive these days, was there a moment in your life that you wanted to give up on music? How did you manage to stay focused and achieve what you want?
Oh no no, never – music is probably the only thing I can do and I really want to do. It’s a hard business, I know that, but the only thing that matters to me is, that I stay concentrated and continue writing music, which affects and inspires people.
How would you describe your creative processes? Who writes the lyrics to the songs? Are the music and lyrics written in conjunction, or separately?
I write the lyrics and the basics of every song – most of the time I start with some chords on the guitar or piano, but there are also songs, where the lyrics are already good to go and the chords or the music is missing.
The most important thing is that I have to be alone, and I mean completely alone, to write songs – it’s a creative process where I need to be in my own little world, soaked in old and new memories and feelings.
Where the inspiration comes from?
Well, for me it’s really hard to talk about my feelings and thoughts, so the best way to express them is to write about what’s on my mind or what bothers me – so that’s kind of my inspiration for a lot of songs.
What’s your favourite track from the upcoming album and what other bands/artists are you listening to right now?
It’s probably “waiting for“ – I really like the meaning and idea behind it, because the process of “waiting“ is like a constant condition – we are all kind of waiting for something or someone, and this can sometimes be really depressing and disappointing.
Right now I’m listening to a lot of Bon Iver, Keaton Henson and Ben Howard – I admire all of them!
What’s next for you?
Next year my band and I will play at the Eurosonic Festival in January – we are more than excited – and we’re playing a couple of concerts during the year.
