Perera Elsewhere
Perera Elsewhere (real name Sasha Perera) is an experimental creative genius who has received universal acclaim as she unveils her 12-track album titled 'Home.' We hear more versions of Perera Elsewhere than ever before. On the album, she says “'Home' is like having different music playing in each room of your house at once and still being chill with that.”
This artist's career has been marked by journeys, which have taken her from Berlin's bass experimentalist underground to London's booming club scene. Few artists have exemplified this more than Perera Elsewhere, who encourages excursions but always returns home. Her use of tech to create and experiment with her voice, lyrics, percussive beats, deep bass frequencies and sound design to explore the human experience, all led to her ‘Doom-Folk’ coined sound. All of this contributes to her adoring and shapeshifting music persona.
Home is a juxtaposition of the notion of 'Elsewhere' and musings on leaving/coming/staying home, inspired by the various events that occurred during 2019-2022, emphasised by the pandemic. The album is a musical maturation and culmination of all of her past efforts.
In a Coeval Magazine interview with Perera, she delivers insights into her musical upbringing, her underground yet rising fame... and the ins and outs of 'Home'.
How did you begin your career in music? Have you always wanted to create music and how did that passion take form?
I played instruments sporadically as a kid (trumpet was the longest for 5 years) but was never in a band and never actually knew anyone who was in a band. I definitely ran around the house dancing to pop music as a kid. I just loved music and went out to music from a young age. I was also a freak who wanted to rebel against my family and to be fair: it fuelled me somehow, even tho I love them lots! Notting Hill Carnival definitely played a role too…
I moved to Berlin to escape having to be part of the London grind. . I knew I couldn’t just have a normal job 9 to 5 as I would have died of depression tbh. So I moved to Berlin to find a haven to just exist in a city that was slower, cheaper and has more appreciation for art/creativity than money. London and life had made me angry and I needed to heal and express that. I started as a vocalist, but bought basic gear pretty early and messed around with Ableton. I was part of a trio with my friends called Jahcoozi _early hybrid bass music.
It is the technology that has really enabled me to put down my ideas alone in any place at any time. I’m autodidakt but feel very comfortable using software, hardware, synths, acoustic instruments etc. Whatever it takes. I basically spent quite a few years messing about till I could sculpt a sound I wanted for my solo project Perera Elsewhere.
It is still a journey and I continue to add to it. I also love composing moving images for art installations, films, and dance pieces. I play live concerts and also play some pretty fkkn banging DJ sets too. I have mentored students and artists for Ableton and am part of a Berlin project called Errrormusic that celebrates experimentation in music and is targeted at female-identifying & non-binary school kids in Berlin. In the end, I love creating and communicating through music. I also am lucky enough to be booked in some really special settings and have met some lovely & inspiring humans on the way. The community that I get out of music is as valuable as the act of making it.
What is the music scene like in the city you live in, Berlin? Are there things you found out from being a Berlin-based artist that surprised you?
I’m lucky to live in a place which has such a high turnover of creative people coming through. It was much more off the radar when I moved here from London but the influx of people has actually made it more and more exciting in some ways. It is more diverse than ever before. Lockdown in Berlin was total luxury. People here trust the state more than in the UK and rightly so. I even made new friends and artists simply coz I wasn't touring so much etc. It made me appreciate the city again after being here for so long.
In other ways, there are annoying things like the focus on techno here. There is so much other music here that happens but it gets overshadowed by techno coz a lot of tourists come with a clear vision of what they wanna do: a to-do/shopping list of Kit Kat and Berghain etc. It feels like techno is what the EDM kids have graduated into. The tech industry which is now very present in Berlin also seems to love techno. Many of these people don't even seem to know that techno comes from Detroit ): they think it is actually from Germany LOL. So techno ends up taking up a lot of the spaces with decent sound systems etc. Leaving less decent spaces for other types of (electronic) music. Nonetheless, there are so many things happening in this city in terms of music/art/culture /collective experimentation and expression. People have time and people are curious. And many things cost virtually nothing. It is still an incredible city.
Your music is described as experimental pop, can you elaborate on this genre and your music style?
It is partly pop music because I write songs with hook lines and verses and c-parts and stuff. But I also write 6 min instrumental tracks which are super cinematic. I tend to use special sounds that transport you places. I don't use standard sound libraries or sample packs. I craft sounds myself, play instruments I can and can't play and tweak my way through sound design until I love what I'm making and it somehow works.
And, what usually inspires your music? Personal memories, art, etc.
Feelings I guess …and the instruments and sounds I use, the day I’m making it, the mood I’m in, the people around me, the movies I’ve watched, the books I’ve read, the way music has made me feel, stuff I make up, stuff I imagine, true stuff, the country I’m recording in, the country I was born in, the country I should have been born, the country I moved to, the country I wish I was in …. Elsewhere lol. Yeah, it’s a lottttttt.
The first single you shared was “Hold Tite.” What does "Hold Tite" mean to you and why did you choose to share it with us first?
It means life is gonna throw so much weird unpredictable evil shit at you, that you better hold tite! Brace Brace. it’s a ride!!! Enjoy it somehow!! And then some nice stuff may happen too (:
Speaking on the track you say "It‘s like a boxer getting mentally focused before going into the ring … an anthem to keep your demons in check." What motivated you to create music about keeping mentally focused?
I mean these are real tings rite? Life can be a proper battle I think … it’s fun too but nothing is easy. Every single one of us on this planet has to fend for ourselves in the end. And we all go through stuff. Society is generally not a fair place, you just take your spot and battle through, and protect yourself and the people you love. If you get to fight for the things you want to fight then that is a luxury. Most people have to fight for the stuff they have to fight for. As you can hear London is a place that prepares you for the battle but also traumatizes you for life LOLOL.
Your forthcoming album titled Home is inspired by the many things that transpired between 2019-2022 -highlighted by the pandemic. How do you want people to feel when listening to Home?
Home has so many different feelings about it! Stranger is so melancholic, heavy dark yet really beautiful. Der Wurm 1 & 2 are really driving and cinematic. No vocals on those tracks so the listener is really absorbed in a sound journey.
HKW is actually almost a club banger but in an afro-industrial-dungeon style venue LOL
Emo- Apocalyptic vibes on Like This, Travel Lite and Who I am.. These are rlly pop too. The pitchshifters I use on my voice always make it kinda spooky I guess, but I actually find it super sexy too. I mean the ‘male’ me ( my voicepitchshifted down) sounds emo and sexy to me. I would hang w. Him!
The album is synth heavy.. I used a Moog, a Prophet, some modular bits.. and a whole bunch of other stuff. So psychedelic is the vibe too.
Ppl gonna feel happy, sad, confused, melancholic, self-affirming and self-destructive all in one!
My Trumpet all pitchshifted also adds drama. Drama is life.
There are some pretty happy songs on there too ( for my purposes ) Heatwave and Translate Optimizer are kind of dance around the room and sing with me vibe. Translate Optimizer is the only track that has acoustic bass and acoustic drums and you feel the vibe of my live band, feels kinda Latin Gloria Estefan. It's the final track on the album and it leaves the listener ecstatically happy.
Out of all the tracks from Home, can you let us in on your favourite and explain why?
Maybe HKW coz it is like the opening of a sci-fi movie…… and actually super clubby. and somehow again even trumpet on there. I like to surprise myself and the listener. Der Wurm ! is also just surprising coz I am outing my secret arpeggiator fetish there…
Describe how you see your music developing over the next couple of years.
I actually love collaborating with people and have already started working on some music collabs in a kind of embrace of this post-lockdown period. Just nice to reconnect generally.
I am a multi-disciplinary artist in some ways and I collaborated with a Rwandan poet on a live performance in April in Berlin. I would love to travel there and do more with her. Rwanda ranks in the top five countries for gender equality. I wanna witness this.
I also produced 4 songs for the upcoming Nina Hagen album which drops in December. This is a REALLY a fucking huge honour. I just won a prize in the German indie music awards which is also a really huge honour and hopefully, a few more people will listen in as a result.
interview IZABEL ROSE
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