We Go Down the Musical Rabbit Hole With Melbourne Producer Alice Ivy

Sampling—the act of repurposing old music and changing its pitch, tempo or length—has been an instrumental feature in hip-hop and electronic music for more than three decades.

It’s how Kanye West got his big break when he became known for sampling old soul music and increasing the pitch to make his own brand of "chipmunk soul".

And though Melbourne producer Alice Ivy, aka Annika Schmarsel, hasn’t coined a sub-genre as iconic as "chipmunk soul" (yet), she’s used the musical style of sampling to forge her own unique path; using the music of others to establish her own voice.

"I started playing guitar when I was about 10 [years old]," Schmarsel explains ahead of her TEDxYouth performance in Sydney this week. "But I picked up production about three years ago."

The first six months of trying to learn production were difficult for Schmarsel and she admits she didn't enjoy the process. Once she got into sampling and playing live, however, things started to kick off for her.

She began sampling tracks from vinyl, but found it was a really lengthy process to extract the songs from the vinyls and then import them into her production software to warp them.

"I feel like today I could definitely write a song quicker than I could a couple of years ago," Schmarsel explains, having branched further into synths and digital audio tracks on her latest single "Get Me a Drink", featuring E^ST and Charlie Threads.

She finds her samples by listening to a whole range of music. "Feel good stuff and stuff that captures my attention," she explains. "There'll be certain parts of the song where I'm like 'that's amazing'."

"I can never really write a simple song; even though simple can be effective, I'm really interested in sounds and textures," she says. "I try to keep it as interesting as possible."

It's true of "Get Me a Drink", which she says has "so much going on in it, you don't know where it's going to go." Alice describes the tune's vibe being like a trip "down the rabbit hole" kind-of vibe (though, that's not an apparent reference to another famous Alice).

With all these layers and samples intricately weaved together, live shows aren't something Alice can whip up within a few hours before stepping on the stage. That said, after playing dozens of shows over the past few years, Schmarsel believes she can now almost do it in her sleep.

"It's something I really honestly struggled with when I first began this project because I've never really played as a solo musician [before], I was always in the background," she confesses.

But it hasn't stopped her from playing huge shows, like this year's Groovin' the Moo, where she played on the main stage in front of tens of thousands of festival-goers.

"I got put on the main stage because an artist was sick," she explains. "That was a bit of a moment where I was like 'Wow, this is actually phenomenal'."

 

At the age of 24, Schmarsel's already graced Spotify's featured playlists, appeared in Triple J playlists and is about to hit up TEDxYouth. With her debut album scheduled for release later this year, don't expect to see her disappear down the rabbit hole anytime soon.

You can catch Alice performing live at TEDxYouth on Wednesday, September 6 or later this year at THE PLOT in Sydney.

Photo: Supplied