Annelotte de Graaf is at the helm of Heavenly Recordings upcoming releases with her five-piece group, Amber Arcades. Hailing from Utrecht initially, she steers her debut release, Fading Lines, into the hands of the public on 3rd June with its diverse blend of psychedelia, Kruatrock and ethereal atmospherics. She has recently become the hot topic of contemporary music having filled both her Great Escape venues beyond capacity. Delegates were turned away from the Komedia on Friday afternoon as bodies rammed the venue beyond access, queues were then spotted heading all the way down the road towards Juju where people still kept their fingers crossed for catching some of the show.

Her single, ‘Right Now’ captured the attention of the British music industry, naming her as one of the top acts to keep an eye peeled for in 2016 and, if anything, her time at The Great Escape confirmed that all expectation and hype for the album is founded on solid groundings. I caught up with Annelotte just after her intimate show at Komedia and chatted about the past, the album and her time over in America:

So your debut album, Fading Lines is set to come out two weeks today?
Yes, exactly two weeks today – today is a Friday so, two weeks today.

Did you enjoy the recording process?
Yes, of course. I was in New York for a month, we were in the studio for two weeks. The first week we were doing some pre-recording stuff and then the week after we were doing some mixing and then it was done.

How did you find the whole writing process before that?
It was a natural process really, it was never such a conscious thing. I think I wrote about 80 percent of the songs in the six months before I went to record. I was working this job at the court house as a legal officer and there wasn’t enough work anymore so I lost my contract, but I’d already scheduled going to New York by this point. So that left me with a lovely two or three month period where I was completely left to writing songs which was cool, it freed up so much time for me to dedicate to creativity. So, instead of planning on quitting a month early before going to New York, I was given three months to write and focus on what I loved doing. It was cool that I had so long to go over unfinished ideas and little bits of songs right before I went away to New York.

On the topic of your time working at the court house, I read the press release for your new album which outlined how you were quite involved with Syrian refugees, can you tell me more about that?
Yeah, this was my day job at the courts, I worked at an immigration service and when I first started, it was on Syrian refugee cases that I was working on. It is an interesting job for sure.

Did you find your influences from the job came into your music at all?
Any bleeding across into my music is not conscious as such, my job is involved with the Supreme Court and it gives me a huge sense of fulfilment doing something so meaningful but then there is my music side which is creative and fun, it is something I like to keep away from that. I don’t consciously think: “Oh, I’m going to write this song about this person I’ve heard about from work or something” but, I mean I work with it a lot so subconsciously, perhaps it does come across. It’s definitely not a conscious effort though. I like to keep the two aspects of my life separate.

So, with your debut release Fading Lines, what can we expect musically speaking?
Well, it’s a diverse album I think. I’m just really happy with how it turned out in the end. Yeah, I think people call it dream-pop which I guess is a pretty accurate description of perhaps most songs on there. Then there’s various divergence towards different aspects, for example there is a seven minute Krautrock-styled jam and then other elements which are definitely more of the acoustic sort of workings. There’s another move towards the more general pop song style so it’s quite diverse. I became quite concerned before recording it at how the final sound would come out, like, how am I going to turn this out into a record as a whole piece without it being too sort of schizophrenic, you know – how do I go from this to that, to that. Then when I started working on it with Ben Greenberg as producer, he had a vision of how to bring each of the separate elements into the whole thing which was really great.

Cool, so with Ben Greenberg as producer, who has previously worked with the likes of The Men and Destruction Unit, did any of his past bleed into your work?
I’m not sure really. I mean like, definitely his taste in music interested me which is more rooted in that sort of hardcore punk sound but once again, any influence of his taste was more sort of subconscious.

So looking at your roots, how do you find the Netherlands?
Well, I spent my whole life there as you know. So my friends, my family, my job, that’s all there which is nice. The Netherlands on the whole is a really good place, the only thing that bothers me sometimes is how everybody wants to stay beneath the radar, stay hidden and blend in. We have this phrase over there that suggests nobody wants to stand out above the crops. Everyone is kind of like very low key I guess. Nobody is really allowed to be crazy, everybody needs to fit in which is very engrained into the Netherlands culture. It’s very easy to blend in and let everything go on around you. That’s the only thing I really don’t like too much but, we’ll see. Brighton is so different to that, so colourful and individual.

Would you ever consider moving elsewhere then?
Yeah, of course, I mean I’ve lived in Philadelphia before which I think is pretty nice. I’m always interested in relocating myself, I try and relocate to a new place after a certain point in time just to head somewhere with a new environment and new scene, and all of a sudden you can see life from a new angle or whatever. Like, moving to Brighton, for example, all of a sudden you can recreate and redesign your whole life I guess. For example the way you talk and the way you can act and then the way you are perceived, like I only started playing guitar when I moved to Philadelphia.

Okay, so how come you moved to Philadelphia?
Well I moved there for a semester during university, it was back in 2010 when I was studying. I really loved music but never played guitar really. But when I moved there I saw it as an opportunity, all of a sudden there was a chance to reinvent myself and who I was so that was when I started with instruments. I started off by buying a little mandolin when I thought I might get more into music, mainly because I met quite a few people involved in music. I met quite a few punk kids who were friends through friends, they were starting up bands and that was, like, my way into music really.

Did you enjoy your time out in America?
Yeah, back in 2010, it was great, I really loved it. I mean, I was quite young, I was 21 but it was a new experience, I loved it.

What are your plans for the rest of The Great Escape then?
Well we got here yesterday at about 3pm. We played Latest Music Bar last night and we played here earlier today but then we need to go up to London tomorrow to do some press stuff. We haven’t really seen many bands unfortunately though just because you are always so busy loading things in and out all the time. We saw Nap Eyes yesterday at Latest Music Bar because we were on the same stage and they were unbelievable. Today we’ll try and see Telegram later on who are on at Latest Music Bar, I think.
Tom Churchill

Read our album review of Fading Lines here: http://brightonsfinest.com/html/index.php/12-music/1486-amber-arcades-fading-lines

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