Alice Phoebe Lou
We discovered Alice Phoebe Lou at last year’s Reeperbahn. She looks a bit like her fellow countrywoman Yolandi of Die Antwoord, but makes a completely different type of music. She deserves the same level of attention, though. There is lightness, a lot of bright ideas, playfulness and joy of performing in her music. You’ll believe every tone she plays and every word she sings; there isn’t really more an artist could wish for. She has played festivals such as SXSW and TEDx Berlin. She started as a foreigner without home, but has made it to the top German and Austrian iTunes music genre charts. Alice will be playing her beautiful songs at Pohoda 2017.
27. February 2017
At the age of 16, Alice made her first journey to Paris. Inspired by watching fire dancers, she began to perform likewise to get enough money to fund her travelling. She made a breakthrough in here career when she moved to Berlin. The freedom of the city was intoxicating and she immersed herself in the creative world there. As a matter of fact, when she came to Berlin, she made one euro playing with fire here. Once, she asked a street performer if she could play a song on his guitar. She only knew how to play “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” but that did the trick. Her voice caught the crowd’s attention and the guy got a couple of euros for the performance. She exchanged fire for a guitar and her street performances started to gain more and more attention. She started collaborating with acoustic, jazz and electronic musicians; including Italian Matteo Pavesi who quickly became Alice’s live performance companion. Alice and Matteo play a mix of folk, blues and electronic music, inspired by the likes of Patti Smith and Portishead. In 2014, she released the Momentum EP and in April last year her debut Orbit came out. Today, she has 130,000 monthly listeners on Spotify (like Lola Marsh). In September, she was nominated for German Critics Choice Award (Popkultur Awards) in the category of Best Female Artist. German Rolling Stone praises her independent approach and listed her Reeperbahn performance as one of the must-see shows.
“Music to me is about storytelling and singing about subjects that are relatable to all humans. I like to try to spread positive and thought-provoking messages, to try and use music as a gift and a tool for positive change,” says Alice about her music, which will spread in the “streets” of Pohoda festival at the beginning of July.