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Music

Artist On The Run: the Adventures of Alison Wonderland

From one dance floor and dance chart to the next, Alison has seen, been and conquered.

Alison Wonderland is always on the move. From one dancefloor to the next, Alison has seen, been and conquered. And now with the release of debut album Run last week we get to watch as Alison climbs chart by chart to the top. It's with a big Cheshire Cat grin that we can announce the record has risen quickly to it's natural resting place at #1 on the iTunes Australian Electronic Albums list. Like Alison's famed DJ sets, the album is an innovative mix of club, pop and hip hop productions. Alison's powerful vocals soar alongside the occasional contribution from friends like Wayne Coyne.

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It doesn't stop there though, the achievements continue to roll in; just this week Alison Wonderland announced she will be playing the legendary Lollapalooza festival. So with a smile, and a tear, we catch up and bid farewell once more to Alison, bound for America.

THUMP: Congratulations on the album. We're thrilled, but can't help noticing you're leaving us?
Alison Wonderland: No no no! I could never leave Australia, I hate when artists just pack up and leave. I really love Australia and I think the best music is coming from here at the moment. What are your thoughts on the australian dance scene at the moment? It's not even dance, it's everything. I think there's some really amazing musicians in this country and I couldn't leave here even if I tried. I'm going to be in L.A a lot but it's funny, I think the more time I've spent in the States, the more Australian I feel. From touring and travelling I've come to realise how good we have it here and how incredible the music is. Everyone talks about tall poppy syndrome and I think it was like that for awhile but I recently found here that it's a lot like a community

Moving so much do you feel like you're navigating between two worlds?
Yes, completely. It's feels at the moment that my life is either super hectic or super super quiet, and there's no happy medium. And in those super quiet times, when i'm just sitting around, it feels quite strange. Especially when I'm over in L.A because I haven't had my own space for just 'me time'. For me my base is my room and my dog. But when you're touring it's always the same dynamic and at the moment I'm either writing or touring. It's not like it's new though. When I was younger I used to take a backpack with me everywhere which had spare clothes and I used to sleep at friends houses, always constantly moving. It might seem sad but I always feel most at home in the Virgin Lounge because I'm there so much.

Like youself, dance music itself moves often and quickly. I guess being adaptable is an essential personal quality?
Yes, and it's intersesting to think about what the next generation will be doing. It's amazing, I'm so excited. People ask me where I see dance music going a lot. For me, on a lot of this record, there are tiny little mistakes in the music or the singing which I didn't take out on purpose because that gives it value. And I think there's a lot more people keeping it raw.

There was a quote a few years ago from the senior Vice President of EMI talking about how their was two sides of you — a party DJ side and an artist side. Do you feel this record is the sound of fully embracing that artist side?
Yeah, and I think my EP did that. I was too scared for a long time to write how I felt. I previously had a whole album ready which I scrapped because someone close to me said "you can tell everyone at the end of the day that you put every part of yourself into this, but at the end of the end of the day, you're the only one who's going to know if you truly did that, and you're going to have live with that for the rest of your life." And that stuck in my head, so I ended up drunkenly calling the head of EMI at 2.00am and saying "Let's do an EP, I know I've got something better to give." So I took that risk and chose to stick my guns. It's scary because a lot of Australia knew me as a DJ, no one knew about Whyte Fang because I kept it so under raps because I wanted to be anonymous and for people to just like me for the music. So weirdly enough, people seemed to like it and accept it, so it gave me the confidence I needed to go into my album and really go for it

Alison Wonderland's debut album Run is out now