Where the music takes her

Alice Phoebe Lou’s bio on her website refers to her lifestyle as “vagabond” on more than one occasion. This is an appropriate description for a journey that has seen her wander and travel across Europe since she was just 16 years old.

Now settled in Berlin, the 23-year-old South African-born singer/songwriter has taken part in TEDx Berlin, with her performance sitting on half a million views on YouTube and also seen her 2016 debut album,Orbit, chart at #2 on the German iTunes singer/songwriter charts and at #1 on the Austrian singer/songwriter charts.

When we speak over the phone, a few days before her return home where she’ll be performing three shows, it’s hardly surprising that she’s on the move.

Currently in London grabbing a quick bite after performing there the night before, she’ll soon be headed back to Berlin. A few weeks ago she’d been touring Europe with her band, but at this particular show she was playing solo.

She’s doing everything independently, which means it’s financially not possible to take her band with her everywhere she goes, so she makes a decision on this based on each individual offer.

It’s a challenge she enjoys. “I kind of like the full experience of being an artist,” she says. “So not just making the music but also learning about the logistics and the business side of things so that I can have a handle on all of that stuff and really know and impact that side of my life.”

When she performs in Cape Town today and tomorrow and in Johannesburg on Sunday, she’ll be performing with her band. And she plans on sticking around for a while after the shows.

“I love home and I need my proper dose of home every year. It can’t just be a two week in and out, see family, run around and leave. So what I do is I usually head home in the beginning of December and I spend about three months at home so that I can really get a full dose and see all my friends and also relax into it. I was there since the beginning of December until about two weeks ago when I started my European tour and now I’m coming back for about a month.”

Her parents and most of her friends live in Cape Town. I ask her how the city differs to Berlin.

“There’s a lot of differences, but what I’m seeing as a similarity right now is that the new wave of youth culture and music in Cape Town right now is starting to resemble something like Berlin.

“It’s on a very small level but just because I think that first of all having the radios start to play South African music and having like a new wave of support for local music is actually going to change the scene in such a positive way.

“And right now when I look at my friends and peers and a lot of people that are between the ages of, like, 18 to 25, they are doing some amazing things and organising parties and new projects.”

What really attracted her to Berlin is the sense of togetherness and artists supporting one another. That’s something that she’s starting to see in Cape Town, and it excites her.

She explains how, as an independent artist, it has been particularly tricky not having the support of labels that usually put a large amount of money into the expensive costs of creating an album.

“I worked very hard to have the kind of money that it takes to record a professional album. It was a very DIY process and we learnt a lot and made a lot of mistakes along the way that have really equipped me for the next album that I’m going to create, which I’m gonna be starting in April.

This album is a moment in time. It’s an ambient experience, I wrote it and created it as something that you sit down, close your eyes and you listen to it from start to finish. Like an experience, like a story, like people used to listen to records back in the day and are starting to do again. Not just the latest single and the one with the most clicks.”

Her hard work and dedication in putting Orbit together was rewarded with a nomination for Best Female Artist at the German Critics Choice Awards in September.

With the experience she’s acquired over the past year or so, she feels ready to approach the next album with more maturity.

Her recent European tour, for which she was also the tour manager, a choice she took to allow her to save money so as to have the five-piece band she really wanted, was a major success and one of the highlights of her budding career.

Although she says she lost a lot of money, she’s proud to have been able to put on the show she really wanted and she’s optimistic that it will open doors and pave the way for more success.