Grande Maison

I’m obsessed with reading autobiographies and biographies of people – not just musicians but just of anyone. I love to know people’s stories and how they got to where they are.

The two piece euphoria-core act from South Africa are a 'deeply affecting and beautiful band; the thumping and daydreamysqueltches, the beat dragging like distant machine gun fire cutting through televised loins, the changing rhythms, they all combine into some kind of teen sandpaper love making; sore and beautiful. Rakow sings like she’s been dragged through the city by a cancer–ridden unicorn. They’re a little island of determined angry strangeness with a hint of toilet sex... With a bleak and fragile hypnosis they mesmerize and confound. All heartbreakingly corrosive and devastatingly alluring'.

GM Did you ever learn music or play music?
Eve I had no formal musical education before I tried to enroll at Wits University in Johannesburg. You need to have a grade 7 in the instrument you wanna study at a tertiary level. I had grade zero. The entrance exam was a one page theoretical exam which I turned over and wrote an impassioned essay about how music is within us all and if they only gave me a chance I would prove their system wrong and prove that my passion for music would be my guide through this language I was yet to learn to speak. There was also a practical exam. My instrument was my voice. So I was required to sing a composition of my choice (usually a classical or jazz piece depending on where you saw yourself musically) I sang Fionna Apple paper bag. HaHa.
Thinking back on it now, I feel like holy hell I had balls, what a cheeky little witch! But it worked. I got in. They warned me it would be hell trying to catch up 7 years of training and trying to move foward with the rest. They were not wrong. It was hell. But it was the very first hell I got to choose for myself. So for me, it was bliss. That first sassy step towards doing something I had no idea how to do was a defining moment for me. Always be scared. If its not scary its not worth it.

GM What’s your favorite music?
Eve Mostly music that ends up staying with me is music that I flat out hate when I first hear it. I'll never forget the first time I heard Joanna Newsom sing I was like ' girl? You can not be serious! What is your life?' But it is special voices like that that change what it is to make music.

GM What’s the most inspiring musical instrument?
Eve The voice. If you can speak you can sing. A lot of people try to refute that statement but I believe it to be true. Everyone has a voice like no one else. That is amazing and inspiring to me.

GM Do you see yourself as creating parallel realities?Like a little world that’s parallel to the big world so that it balances the image of the world itself?
Eve I dont think I create parallel universes but I do hope my music can be a portal to these spaces. A safe space to weird out, you know?

GM What is your favourite number and why?
Eve Nine. It was the number I was born to. It is the number of the natural lightworker, those of us that work to bring light to others. This is why I make music. I make music because I have to. Because I was destined. To because I must.

GM Do you have any heroes, heroines and icons you admire?
Eve I do. Yes. Many. I admire anyone that is able to wake up and happily go about the business of being. Its harder than it sounds. I guess someone like mamma bjork is inspiring. She is a musician but for me she doesnt even make music she vibrates on another level altogether. I find that beautiful and intriguing. I get something from listening to her sounds and watching the visuals that she creates along the way that I get nowhere else. A certain ancient wisdom that belongs not to her but but is communicated through her. I like that she is disliked by as many people as she is appreciated by. I really enjoy artists that divide people in that way.

Some one like David Bowie is also very special to me. I never really even liked more that 2 or three songs he made. But the effect of him as an intity is incredible. He was a beautiful beautiful game changer.

I have mad love for anyone who can come into an already established way of doing things and change it. Someone like Patti Smith is also an incredible source of inspiration for me. What that skinny little white girl poet did for rock n roll is astounding! I love you patti! But I'd have to say Brenda Fassie is one of my greatest sources of strength. Mabrr's sass has gotten me through some dark days! And good god could she sing! I die. Wow.

GM What is your earliest childhood memory?
Eve Saving some kid in nursey school from drowning in a portable pool without anyone even seeing. But every time I tell that story it seems more and more like a made up memory. My memory is terrible. It scares me sometimes, because if all we are are a collection of our experiences and I dont seem to be able to retain those memories as well as most then what does that make me? Thank god for the internet right? Oh lord.

GM Do you have different views of your voice?
Eve It took me not a short time to become comfortable with my voice. She is not the strongest or the best or the most eloquent but she is all I got so I gotta make the things she spues count.

GM What do you feel you’d like to achieve in life?
Eve Yoh! So much. But I guess if you break it down to its core. I want to dance with the world. There is a healing that happens on the dance floor that is more powerful than anything. When we let go an connect with the multiverse then our true power is revealed.

GM If you would ever be interested in building your own house. And where you would want to build it, and what material it would be made out of, and if you would want to paint it. Would you want it to be made of wood or concrete, glass or water? What color would you paint it?
Eve A dream of mine is to create a physical dream scape much like the one I try to create with music. It is a life goal. I will make this real before I leave this physical form.

GM And does life imitate art far more than art imitates life?
Eve Life is art. Is not the moon a testament to that?!

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Interview by Astrid Al-Abadi