Setting the Scene

My worn out leg warmers

Gosh, where do I start? Well, before I launch into our entire history please allow me to briefly summarise who/what we actually are and what we do. Have you ever heard of Qunk? No!? Well you have now... Qunk is a weird quirky kinda pop-punk that us here at ALICE ROCK just invented. In actual fact, we are a two piece band consisting of me (Alice) on guitar/vocals and Tabby on drums. Our sound and live act are pretty unique and certainly hard to categorise. Our music is full of contrast ~ crazy but calm, witty but dark, hilarious but melancholy, full of laughable quirks but also bursting with tears... The only consistencies are a true, honest passion existing throughout, amongst which every detail bears relevance. Nothing is fictional in what I sing and what we do, but at the same time, it all seems like a fairytale really. Directing you to our music page where all of our music is available for free download is probably the most effective method of description. Well, for those of you who wish to plough ahead with the detailed version, here goes...

......The Beatles, a 'White Rabbit' (?)

YEAH?! Yet to gain a Tabby

Miniture Alice + sibling + Mum

Well, funnily enough, my name actually is 'Alice Rock' – quite a blessing really as thinking of band names is always a tricky one! Music began for me at the age of 6 when I was lucky enough to be sent to piano lessons. I’m in the fourth generation of pianists in my family and have always had my Great Grandmother's piano firmly by my side for inspiration. The grounding all those lessons gave me as a child has been invaluable and at this stage in my life/career, I can see that my mother was right when she told me all the practice would one day worth it. By the time I was 13 a growing obsession with The Beatles had lead me to the guitar... As I remained gripped by their every sound, they somehow gave me the sense of identity I'd previously been lacking, so, feeling switched on, I proceeded to save my paper round wages for God knows how long until I could make that special purchase – yes... my first guitar!! I rapidly taught myself to play, perfecting many a Beatles song/riff in the process and made music the center of my increasingly focused little world. I also attempted to teach myself to sing!! Singing was something I had always been told I wasn't able to do particularly well but I thought I’d try anyway, just to annoy my brother if nothing else.

By the age of 15 I was playing and performing in bands as a lead guitarist. Being a teenage girl playing lead guitar was pretty cool as there weren’t (and still aren’t) many of us around. I have always wondered why this is (?). People would generally assume that I was going to be useless, especially all those long haired alpha males that appear to breed like rabbits in most music shops. This annoyed me a little but also gave me endless determination and as my teens progressed I taught myself to play the bass guitar, drums, synthesizer and also how to make home recordings using my computer. I was in numerous bands over the next 7 years and also produced a large number of home recordings.

Finding Wonderland...

If only huh! Pesky microchips

Despite being an accomplished multi-instrumentalist at a pretty young age, I never felt able to write my own songs, mainly because I struggled lyrically – well this is what I had been made to believe anyway. I also had no confidence in my singing, I thought my voice was pretty rubbish... "It’s too harsh sounding and annoying" I always used to tell myself!! This all changed when a difficult (crazy, bizarre? err, ridiculous!) situation switched my creative switch from off to on (my early lyrics say it all!). Cathartic song writing became involuntary as I used my lyrics, humour and a somewhat crazy guitar style to express my anger, exorcise the demon and help myself move forward. I progressively wrote and recorded songs as my state of mind evolved – the end result was 'Finding Wonderland', a conceptual album that weaves the emotional tale of a journey towards happiness after a fall with 'Wonderland' being the final destination i.e. happiness. Luckily for me, the sheer craziness of the situation I'd been exposed to provided me with vast amounts of cheeky lyrical ammunition and certainly prevented me from 'getting the violins out' (wallowing sucks!!). I saw the funny side and relished in the humorous songs that followed – laughter is always the best form of medicine (and punishment!).

Photographic woodland fun

A punky, bubblegummy singing voice seemed to naturally form as I wrote and recorded Finding Wonderland alone in my bedroom (my poor housemate! Awwh, she was amazing)... Ridiculous amounts of multi-tracking sent me virtually insane as I sat for night upon night, piecing little files together to create the incredibly rich, full band sound that became a momentous, 12 track concept album. Quite how I achieved this with my limited, shoddy set up, I’ll never know.

Part way through the recording process I set out to establish myself as a solo artist by playing live as often as possible... I had very little self belief in the first instance, mainly due to the 'pre-Wonderland' nightmare. I remember having to literally force myself to sing in front of people, I used to secretly drink absinthe in the toilets before going on stage as I was petrified... but as time passed, I felt like I'd embarked on what was becoming an amazing musical/emotional journey, I felt increasingly empowered. My extremely cool sis-in-law (Eve Rock!!) gave me a cool mix-tape for the car that I listened to continuously as I drove between venues!! And so it went, with The B52s helping me every step of the way, I proceeded to play all over the place, appeared on radio shows and was written about in magazines, always bemusing people with my strange punky acoustic guitar style, silly clothes – oh, and my songs of course.

You two make so much noise!

Summer 2006 was drawing to a close and so was the recording of Finding Wonderland and then... as if by magic, everything changed when I played a gig in a little known Nottingham venue only to stumble across a wonderful creature who told me he went by the name of ‘Tabby’ (?). There was a certain something about him, a twinkle in his eye that both endeared and inspired me – I now realise this feeling was in actual fact 'love at first sight' (yay!). Alice Rock quickly evolved into ALICE ROCK as 'Alice and Tabby' took to the music scene as a quirky two piece poppy/punky/gothy (something-y) band... the emotional emphasis changed as we started to wear matching stripy jumpers and took to recording ridiculous music videos in the woods – the connection was amazing, as was the giggling and all those laughter invoked tears. It was clear we’d always remain a two piece band – nothing and no-one else was needed... the happy ending that every fairytale needs had been found, as had Wonderland.

Time for me to wake up and remove, "Yesterday's Makeup" !

Never disturb the perfectionist!

Phew, well the whole Finding Wonderland debarcle was done and dusted by the end of 2006... We set up our own independent record label 'Rock Records UK' and distributed the album with success but it became immediately evident that a new album was needed to represent what had become our distinctive two piece 'bass-less' sound. So there I was (we were!) planning to record a second album to be known as 'Yesterday’s Makeup'. The album was to contain reworks of several Finding Wonderland classics. I wanted to do this as I felt the need to start from scratch with the appearance of Tabby – I wanted to record an album that contained the tracks we’d spent so long perfecting together when we first met.

Hallucinogenic home recording!!

Yesterday’s Makeup is therefore a 'semi-sequel' to Finding Wonderland as although the two albums share some vital tracks, Yesterday’s Makeup is a concept album in it's own right, containing new tracks that cause the sentiment to go beyond Wonderland to a place I am now very glad to be. Similarly to Finding Wonderland, Yesterday’s Makeup was recorded in my (our) bedroom studio. Recording the two piece sound was a real challenge that took six months in total. The ridiculousness of it all can be seen in our video diary if you fancy a laugh.

Promotion, touring and relocation to London

Smiling on the South Bank

Playing live regularly was something I/we had always done since the very beginning of the Alice Rock saga but, after the release of Yesterday’s Makeup, we decided it was time to do our first official UK tour as means of promotion and also enjoyment (of course). So, we played a long string of dates that took us all over the UK for a few months i.e. London, Manchester, Devon, Wales, Scotland – all in all, quite a few miles were covered in our trusty Ford Ka heehee! It was a great experience as people loved us and everywhere we went they continued to buy our CDs. I was just totally thrilled about this as people’s enjoyment of our act really does mean the absolute world to me. I’m not the most confident of people and still to this day despite having performed hundreds of times, feel very nervous before playing. Unlike a certain cat like creature who always remains as chilled out as they come!!

Lovin' the stranglehold!

We saw the success of our tour as confirmation that our music could be appreciated by a larger audience and that our main challenge was how on Earth do we go about creating one?! From this point onwards we put a lot of work into promoting our music via the Internet, magazines and radio stations and managed to sell hundreds and hundreds of copies of both of our albums in numerous countries across the world. We are both just so, so proud of this achievement as the thought that someone in America, Europe or Japan may be listening to us right now is literally amazing!!

The resulting levels of self belief created by this, lead us to make the decision to relocate to London with the hope of creating the larger audience we crave and to increase our chances of attracting backing from larger parts of the music industry. So, at the end of summer 2008 – we arrived in the Big Smoke and it felt as though we had to start all over again without all the amazing friends and the following we'd built for ourselves in the Midlands. London is a scary place as everything and everyone moves so quicky and there is little sympathy for anything or anyone – ‘survival of the fittest’ is certainly a fitting description. Getting new jobs, a new place to live adapting to the ginormous rat-race aaarrrgh, so much to do, so little time for music. But, true Alice Rock fashion, of course we manage to fit it in – spinning plates has always been a fave passtime of ours?!

Kill or Cure - is this killing us? I think not :)

Good old Channel 4

The capital was a stark contrast to ye sleepy olde East Midlands as never before had I seen such evidence of the 'rat race'. As a newcomer, I was able to view this phenomena through a fresh pair of eyes as I hadn't yet been captured by the grip of the treadmill. I was quick to learn that if you don't learn to force your way through the endless stress-inducing crowds, you'll end up standing still and when doing this, it was hard to avoid questioning the point of the whole thing, not least what drives it?! Millions of people work themselves into an early grave, and for what? The ability to buy a phone that is capable of telling you whether you need to put a coat on before leaving the house?! Somebody somewhere creates something and someone somewhere else will work like a maniac with the aim of buying it. Now don't get me wrong, I'm partial to a gadget or two and I love a bit of scientific progression, but my new platform from which the daily grind could be viewed so clearly made me ask, "Where will this progression end?" and "What will things be like in ten years time?", and most importantly... "Is this endless progression doing us any good?". I have no idea what the answers are to any of these questions, but one thing was for sure 'Kill or Cure' my next album had been born.

Out initial focus in London was to play live as much as we could in order to bond with the scene. It was clear from the outset that London is a different ball game, a tougher nut to crack due to its far more "money centric" nature and also because of the higher playing standard amongst bands. But we were happy to rise to the challenge and things went well as there was many a new fan and friend to be found :)

Writing for Kill or Cure had been completed by early 2010 and by the summer we had released a six song EP as a warm up for the forthcoming album. We received excellent reviews and achieved a similar level of success to that of our previous two albums but we also realised that we needed to raise our recording standard in order to be heard and taken seriously by the industry. So, we took the bold decision to review and re-record every single note of Kill or Cure before enlisting the help of some professionals for the mixing process. This was a painstakingly long process but worth every second as the results were just awesome. I am just so proud of this record!

Kill or Cure was released in August 2011 and the hard work paid off instantaneously as we immediately received support from BBC Introducing and are doing well on iTunes as a result.

He never takes them off!

So wow – here we are, back at pretty much the present day... now in London with two albums firmly under our belt and another in the pipeline, I can scarcely believe it to be honest. Our support remains overwhelmingly strong and we have very high hopes for the future indeed. With the ever-growing brand of ALICE ROCK going strong, self sufficiency still remains paramount - we are the band that does everything ourselves... as we slowly go bananas taking ALL our own photos on self timer and recording ALL our videos ourselves with only a tripod and occasional help from various members of the Rock family, you can safely say we are having the time of our lives. All egos are lost as we laugh at ourselves all the way... you gotta laugh, especially where the music scene is concerned ;-)

We really hope you enjoy our music and all that comes with it.

Thanks for reading

Alice & Tabby