INTERVIEW WITH AZE
-by Justina Speirokaite (Curator at Improper Walls)
- Who/what is Aze?
It's really hard for us sometimes to divide where we end as individuals and where Aze begins if that makes sense. We have known each other for so long - actually celebrating our 20th year of friendship - that Aze has become everything we can't quite seem to put into words otherwise. Aze is of course the love child of two artists and somehow simultaneously also our emotional dumpster. Everything that needs to be processed but doesn‘t want to be ends up in a song. We love and care for this project with everything we have and we are also super grateful to get to share something so special as two best friends.
- When and how did it all start?
The official beginnings were made in 2019 in May where Ezgi wrote her first little verse (which is Common Ground today) over a melody composed by Beyza. But behind closed doors and during lunch breaks at school we have been making our own versions of songs and covering artists we appreciate greatly - since we were around 10 years old maybe. Music has always been something that connected us deeply, we were always in the same fandoms, loved the same beats and though we have our differences musically too, the baseline is the same one so it‘s easy to go off of that and create something new. So we did. And here we are!
- What stands behind the name of your band? (I love this urban dictionary explanation: “Aze: an attractive girl who usually loves sparkling water and goldfish and is gonna be a TikTok queen.”:))
The urban dictionary translation is really cute, wish we were that goldfish loving TikTok queen they are talking about! For us it was more of a joke to say we are the aces in any deck of cards, but because we both have middle eastern origins we thought it would be fun to write it with a soft Z just like it is featured in our names too. So in a way it may sound cocky but see it as a promise from us to our audience to always put forward and present the best of us.
- Last year you released your first EP Dead Heat. Could you tell me more about its concept?
Dead Heat was such a long process, it took us exactly a year between its release and our first single Visions. We started Aze somewhere entirely different emotionally. We were in not very good places and weren‘t getting the love we thought we would. We were putting out all this energy to move something, to create something, to love someone truly, deeply and unbiasedly - so much so that we failed to see that all we were getting back was Dead Heat, all talk no actions. The EP has 5 tracks on it, finishing with Interlude/Outro - the perfect loop back to Visions because it’s actually the song we used to introduce Visions with when playing live. We thought we'd take all the Dead Heat surrounding us and invite her to the table with us. And so we created the artwork for the EP in our favourite bar Lambada with the help of our friend and amazing photographer Christoph Liebentritt. We feel blessed to be able to take the good, the bad and the new out of this experience.
- You also direct and edit your own music videos. Are there more talents? What do you do besides music?
We used to always film ourselves (still do) when we were covering our little songs with our phones or webcams. Ezgi works in fashion and had a studio and some equipment available through that so we decided (with the 0 budget) we have to give it a go ourselves and since the video to Visions turned out really nice we decided to try and film Drawn In and Common Ground ourselves too. The more you do something the better you get at it, we don‘t know for certain if we would keep up with shooting our videos ourselves but it‘s nice to know that if things become difficult we can always rely on our abilities to create something out of nothing. Other than that we both enjoy painting and watching movies too.
- Where can we listen to your music? Are there any live upcoming events?
You can find Aze on every streaming platform available! We would love to talk about up and coming events but as newcomer artists getting a gig in the middle of a pandemic is not so easy. Last time we got the chance to perform was for the cuties at Youki. We miss playing live a lot, so we really hope that there will be new opportunities soon!
