Lost And Sound

Alejandra Cárdenas / Ale Hop

• Paul Hanford • Episode 191

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What happens when you stop working behind a project name, a pedal chain, or a layer of reverb, and let the music speak more directly? That question runs through my conversation with Alejandra Cárdenas aka Ale Hop. On her latest album, A Body Like A Home, she releases music under her own name for the first time, marking a shift not just in authorship, but in how the work is written, recorded, and left open for interpretation.

Alejandra talks through her path from Lima’s punk and experimental underground to Berlin’s music landscape. We dig into how her guitar language has changed over time — moving away from volume and posture toward texture, vulnerability, and even a return to acoustic sound as a way of colouring electronics. She also reflects on production work and imitation briefs as quiet training grounds, and the difference between craft and intention.

Alejandra discusses her research and editorial work, including writing and publishing on Latin American women in electronic music, and how archives, data, and community can slowly reshape visibility and access. 

We also talk about Berlin itself: rising costs, disappearing small venues, and what that means for artists who need space to experiment, fail, and find a voice.

If you enjoy Lost and Sound and want to help keep it thriving, the best way to support is simple: subscribe, leave a rating, and write a quick review on your favourite podcast platform. It really helps others find the show. You can do that here on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen.

Alejandra Cárdenas / Ale Hop on Bandcamp:

https://alehop.bandcamp.com/album/a-body-like-a-home

Alejandra Cárdenas / Ale Hop on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ale_hophop/?hl=en

Huge thanks to Audio-Technica – makers of beautifully engineered audio gear and sponsors of Lost and Sound. Check them out here: Audio-Technica

My book Coming To Berlin is a journey through the city’s creative underground, and is available via Velocity Press.

You can also follow me on Instagram at @paulhanford for behind-the-scenes bits, guest updates, and whatever else is bubbling up.

Paul:

I love it when someone manages to breathe new life into that trusty old war horse of an instrument, the guitar, and that's exactly what Alejandra Cárdenas, aka Ale Hop, my guest on the show today, managed to do spectacularly. Hello, you're listening to Lost and Sound, the show that goes deep with artists shaping music and culture from the underground up. But before we get going, Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica. For over 60 years, this family-run company has been making the kind of gear that helps artists, DJs, and listeners alike really hear the detail. Headphones, microphones, turntables and cartridges. Studio quality, beautifully engineered and designed and built on the belief that great sound should be for everyone. So wherever you are in the world, head on over to Audiotechnica.com to check out all of their range of stuff. Okay, so I'm back from Melbourne. I'm standing uh on a street corner in a very, very, very cold Berlin, and this is Lost in Sound. I'm Paul Hamford. I'm your host. I'm an author, a broadcaster, and a lecturer. And each week on the show I have conversations with artists who work outside the box about music, creativity, and about how they're navigating life through their art. So whether you're new here or you've been listening for a while, it's great to have you along. And yeah, so I'm back in Berlin. If you've been listening recently, you'll know I've spent the seasonal break with my partner in Melbourne. The last few talkie bits I did that you hear me do were in very nice hot weather. And the day before we got our flight back, even it was like over 40 degrees. It was like actually just too hot to be up. But in massive contrast, I'm now speaking to you and I'm back in Berlin. It's snowy. I'm stood on Street Corner in Neukorn, and it's just it's just sludgy and snowy, and it's not quite as cold as it was the other day, but it's you know it's it's a bit it's a bit of a bit of a contrast, and I'm also very jet lagged. Um I'm kind of having I'm waking up at like four in the morning at the moment. Um so I'm a bit jittery, and but the show must go on. And today on the show, I'm joined by artist and researcher Alejandra Cardenas. Up until very recently, she's been making music as Ale Hop. But with the release in November of the album A Body Like a Home on Nicholas Jarr's label Other People, for the first time she's using her given name for music. Alejandra's work moves across live performance, records, sound art, research, and writing, and she began her career in Peru in Lima's experimental and underground music scene before launching her solo work in 2012. Since relocating to Berlin in 2015, her practice has continued to evolve through internationally touring work, collaborative projects, and critically acclaimed releases, including what I think people consider to be the breakthrough record, 2020's The Life of Insects. Known for intense physical life performances and her ability to extend guitar playing way beyond convention. And I think that's the thing that got me first into her music, being absorbed into this kind of world where the guitar just does something different. And I think listening to an album like A Body Like Home, it's how the guitar combines with electronics, with percussion, with voice that kind of creates this sort of sense of immersiveness. It's like listening to a piece of her music is like diving into a great story. Um sometimes it's enchanting, sometimes it's playful, sometimes it feels very fierce and very confrontational. It is the closest, I think, that I have had recently in listening to music to feeling like I'm being transported into like a kind of a story environment. Um alongside her music, Ale is deeply involved in sound research, teaching, and publishing. She co-founded the festival Radical Sounds Latin America, runs the editorial platform Contingent Sounds, and writes extensively about listening as a political and cultural practice. So yeah, we had a chat. We had a chat this morning actually. Um, and the day I'm speaking to you is the 13th of January 2026. So this is the first interview that uh I've done this year. And as I mentioned before, I'm pretty jet lagged today, so you'll probably hear it in my voice a little bit. And but yeah, I really enjoyed the chat. But before we get going, here's the classic bit of housekeeping. If you like the show and you haven't already, please do give it a subscribe, give the show a rating and a review on a platform of your choice. It really, really, really does help. And I appreciate every single listen. And yeah, so this is what happened when I caught up with Alejandra Cardenas. Alejandra, how are you doing? Happy New Year to you. How are you feeling going into 2026?

Alejandra:

Yeah, I'm I'm feeling uh I'm feeling I'm feeling excited, yeah, because uh I will be touring my new album, and yeah, I'm looking forward for that.

Paul:

Is it is this um um when we talk about the touring new album, is this a body like a home or is this something else? Because I know that when we originally scheduled this interview, we were talking about you know, a body like a home.

Alejandra:

Yes, I actually released two albums. That's yeah, so that's it. Uh but yeah, the the latest is the a body like a home. Yeah, I I won't be releasing.

Paul:

Do you feel like because it feels like that album, and I'd love to talk more about that in a minute, but that feels like I don't know if it was like a personal, very big personal undertaking to do, because for the first time you released a record under your own name, rather than alley hop. And I think often that's a sign of an artist sort of maybe reaching out a little bit more personally or sitting in a different zone from where they previously sat. And I was wondering what that meant for you. Why did you decide to release it under your own name?

Alejandra:

Yeah, I I actually wanted to do that for a long time. I never chose my my artist name, it's really not an artist name, it's something somebody called me like uh a long time ago, 20 years ago. And um it's thick, so I I yeah, I kept it for a while. Um I I was meaning to change it, but like the circumstances were like uh I was always feeling like okay, I'm playing in such a niche, you know? Now people already know me in this like little niche. So if I change it, what does that mean? Uh so I didn't do it for a while because I thought it maybe like bad bad for me. Yeah to get you know gigs and but lastly for this record, I thought if I don't do it for this one, I I won't do it ever. So I I did it for this one. Yeah, it was very personal. Uh also it might be like a middle life crisis or something, I don't know.

Paul:

Yeah, I mean, because you do so many different things as well, like was there an element of wanting to tie the album a bit more directly in with, say, your research and your editing so people know who you are through all of these sorts of elements that you do?

Alejandra:

Yeah, I didn't talk about that, but that that sounds good. Um yeah, I I think it's difficult difficult to follow. If even for me, it's difficult to speak about all this because I cannot uh I'm doing so many things at the same time. But um yeah, that makes sense too. But I I really did it because I wanted to do it first, and second because I thought it was the moment because album is really personal and really um autobiographical if if yeah if if such thing exists in music and yeah, I thought it was more powerful under my name.

Paul:

Yeah, and did that take doing something that is personal and is as you say possibly autobiographical, did that take a certain amount of confidence once you'd made the music to put it out or to go through that process? Was that you know not hiding? I'm not saying you were hiding before, but you know, like having a layer of a different name removed, was it was there like any confidence that you had to go through?

Alejandra:

I feel you're you're always hiding, right? Like yeah through your name, your performance, anything through some reverb. So I I was very intentional about not doing that, like in everything the record has in it, like not only that, for example, the way I recorded the voice. The first version had uh more like effects and things, and then I didn't like it, so I did I did everything again and I did uh the mixing and I decided not to do anything, like I put the voice as it was recorded and then like I mix it myself, then the mastering guy said like no, we need to put a TSR and he did so, but like it was a very minimum thing, you know. Uh also like in the writing, I I decided everything that has a everything that is difficult for me to say, I will say it in the most like uh not hiding way. Not symbols or metaphors or and everything else I will use more like let's say literary devices. So I did it like this. Yeah, that is direct, it's very direct, and everything else is a little bit more lyric.

Paul:

Yeah, I love what you're saying there about like we how we hide behind things, and you mentioned like reverb, you know, that's such a common thing. And I think when it comes to like when you're talking about the voice, the directness of the voice on it, I particularly love the track Motherland, and we all we all take our own interpretations of what songs mean. And I don't feel it's always necessary to understand exactly what someone means, rather that it's like a kind of connection that you can sometimes feel with something or an exchange, you know, whether you choose to, you know, because we never really entirely know what an artist is trying to do, and I don't think an artist themselves always knows what they're trying to do to sort of come up with definite meanings for stuff for the listener.

Alejandra:

It's pretty worrying, also. Like I I feel like some people are very good at that, like they make you feel a particular thing right better. I know in in film music, for example, like I feel sometimes a bit manipulated. You may want to make me feel this thing it could get very obvious. Whereas if you I don't know, I'm thinking Hans Zimmer, I had the discussion last week also that uh if you if you leave some space for you know not to let's say like I I think you can build more complex emotions and that's good because then people can do with that more, you know, you're not be scared, be sad and things like that. But if if you if you are aiming for more complexity, then that's good because when I what I have realized the past like years is that when I play live and I'm aiming for that, like then people say to you the most crazy things, you know, like uh they connect with you like in really company where they they are coming, and I think that's that's what you should be doing, you know, not telling people what to feel, you know. And that's good. And of course it's my life and it's very some some parts are very obvious, but people still do with that. I think I have played that song like a couple of times. Um people connect with that like in different ways. I mean, particularly now with the song, like it's about uh it has very a lot of elements. My family was but authoritanism, you know, like the auto-hitanism, you know, for example, that's there. And I feel like I played that for the first time last year in Sydney, and then like in Europe, and I felt like for example, in every place people connect with different things, like the domicile. Um I'm like, you know, I am worried about the people in Gaza, and I had to like you know, do a little bit of catharsis, you know. Yeah, and I like music that allows me to do that, like without. Uh I thought that's great. Yeah, coming totally different, you know, and I I really like that because if you leave some space, you don't say everything, then you have this space of interpretation, which is what you want.

Paul:

Totally. I think another thing that um I really love about listening to the album as well as your other work is just what listening to the evolution of how you use guitar. And I think, you know, I mean, it feels like there's such a sort of on one hand, a very natural way of using guitar, and on another hand, it's completely like uh can be unrecognizable sometimes, you know. It reminds me of like my favorite guitarists have always been people like First and Moore or like My Bloody Valentine, where it becomes like sort of text textural rather than like a bunch of chords. For you, was there a point where you thought I really want to use the guitar differently? Or was it was there like a kind of a moment, or was it always like that for you?

Alejandra:

Um I know because I grew up in the uh 80s, 19s, I I was like, I don't know, listening to Sonic Youth actually.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah.

Alejandra:

And you know, I bought my first uh distortion and rat and then more, and then I went and I wanna began like looping things, and I thought uh well that's good at school. And yeah, I think a lot of people did that. But then like a few years ago I did try to find a new way of playing. Yeah, because I thought like coming from that also the the the cake it felt like I don't know ten years ago, like I was trying to to be someone that I'm not, you know. Yeah and I I thought like it's it's also a very uh masculine, you know, type the you know, coming from that and I thought like this is not me, and and I was just in in the process of thinking about this album, which took me a lot of years to think about. And the first thing I realized is that like I was like in the floor and standing up and in the floor and standing up, and I did so that so much like like 30 times like every concert that at some point it's like going to the gym or something. So at some point I just stay stayed on the floor and I began like looking at things very differently. I'm saying like this very masculine vibe because I feel that that exists a lot in drone, in the way drone is feel like this loud music and like we are in this space, like even like I know I saw uh yeah, many drone bands and they stand like this, you know. Yeah, and I feel like this is I want to do the opposite, I want to be totally vulnerable. So I began like playing on my knees and you know, having people like go towards me, you know, and looking at me, not you know, and I thought this is a different way of thinking about this like music, you know. And this is how it began actually, and then it evolved, you know, and I changed the pedal board for like uh different things, modules, like uh Eurorrack, and then the last step for the record was like I had all already this like new language that I I like, but it was like I want something else, so I put like an acoustic guitar, yeah. Which is like I felt like it was the whole like wrong circle of life, you know. Because you like playing like acoustic guitar and iPhone, like and now I want to play acoustic guitar. I I played when I was six years old, and now I want to play again, so I for the acoustic guitar, and yeah, that that's the two colors that the album has, you know.

Paul:

Yeah, I love I love describing it as colours as well, because that there is such a textural sound to to what you're doing. Uh, and um I love what you're describing about like the because I I I've found that too with with some drone music that there is this sort of almost like the the posture of the masculine posture sort of feels like it's borrowing from stoner rock, or maybe there is a kind of connection between a rock, but yeah, it's for how you feel about it yourself and playing it, I guess, isn't it? And also, I mean, maybe it's about like uh showing a light for other people and how they can do it. If if someone's deconstructing a guitar and taking like a masculine element away from it, you know, it's sort of

Alejandra:

shows that the that the instrument has a bunch of years more possibility ahead of it yeah but hasn't been used well you never know yeah you never know I mean like I feel like people it like they play the guitar they you have like set these stereotypes you know play jazz you play like this if you play metal you play like this and everyone has like their YouTube channel and that's it and school and yeah I feel people should be looking for for more yeah yeah yeah um I just wanted to ask you some questions about like growing up and how music came into your life so you you grew up in Lima right and and like um what was like growing up for you like you know with music did you did you have like a very early experience with music when you when you were young that made you go ah this is this is something that I feel very deeply yeah yeah I had the very early experience of music yeah there were a lot of records in my house and different things like from rock to progressive things to I don't know more like folk music also like Peru yeah also I I listened to a lot of radio which was a scene cassette but uh I think what what tied me to music was I I felt that it was this space that was like separated from from life somehow yeah I I I felt like it sort of of it sort of felt like um if life was not so great you had this space of music which is you know something else completely and because of that I always felt like music has always like saved me because it has always been there for me you know and um yeah it makes you feel different things also sort of connect to yourself you know and yeah it's always there for you how about you don't like it you know yeah were there were there any particular like artists or records that when you when you were young that really spoke to you like that uh I am someone that listens to everything yeah right yeah yeah so I feel like and now I I feel like yeah that's that's an advantage for me right now because I have a lot to draw from I would listen to to the rock music that my parents did this like they were like very classic my mother the Beatles and my father listened to Rolling Stones. They were divorced and my father said that it was because of that but then my bar my my my father also had like a bar and he had a lot a big CD collection and so I would listen to everything that was like in there I would listen to you know Mexican rancheras I would listen to Sonic youth I would listen to I don't know everything salsa and the music that my grandfather listened to that too and my yeah I would go for everything you know like everything and I feel like I still like everything now yeah and like also I I feel in Peru you go to a bus and the bus has like loud music inside the bus you know like being played on a speaker not or do you mean by people individual people playing music? No not like today maybe but yeah back then yeah all the buses have have their own music yeah with you know later they would do reggaeton or salsa or whatever they would listen and some bat ballads you know so this is something that I actually missed because I thought at the moment that it was terrible but now I miss it a little bit because every I live in Berlin everything is so quiet.

Paul:

I know what you mean I live in Berlin too and um it is I mean particularly with the weather right now it just it just like feels like this uh for any listeners that are listening like maybe in two months' time or something like that we're currently in minus temperatures and there's this huge blankets of snow everywhere and it does create this kind of silence particularly at night I was I was I had to walk somewhere last night and all you could hear was just like walking through Hermannplatz was just the sound of like footsteps and trudging on snow really it's quite eerie quiet isn't it yeah yeah was there like a scene in Lima like a musical scene or like a subculture or like an environment that you felt um you could share music with with people or kind of maybe get involved with music with people yeah I mean the first the first thing I discovered when I was like 15 or something I discovered that there was like a call it scena subte so it would be like subterranean scene was more like punk yeah and actually it was from in the 80s so when I began going in 2001 it was already something else but it's still like it had like it had like there were pretty punk bands also rock garage some stuff influenced by local folk music and that and what impressed me I think I I I don't remember which year I began going but it was the year that Fujimori was still like in government.

Alejandra:

And I went to a school that was a little posh where people were pro Fujimori because actually what happens like in that moment is that like the the middle and high classes in Peru are pro-dictatorship because they're getting a benefit economic right yeah yeah it's always like this yeah so it is financially comfortable you know so there's always like uh an interventionist agent you know but like the high spheres are always like corrupted you know they had their own narrative about it so like a friend like uh told me let's go to this console so we went like it was like in the periphery of the city it was like a shock to me because like I I felt like I was in a prison somehow you know because like the opinion of these people and I I felt like uh I wanted to go out and you know what impressed me was that in this concert all the people knew that we were in a dictatorship you know and they yelled about it and they put flyers and then and they were really like you know punk bands saying like yeah no fuck you and that really impressed me you know because this is what I was looking for at that time. I I felt like the other thing to go to the night school was like a prison to me. Yeah because I I couldn't say you know what I thought without people rolling my eyes their eyes to me you know yeah and people don't care so I went for a while to that scene you know which was more like underground scene um and then after a while I grew up and then I began playing in a different scene which we which was the experimental scene which was not that one it's like experimental scene like the first concert that I went where there were five people I think that has to happen that has to happen doesn't it it's like a rite of passage. So yeah so the experimental scene was also a bit underground but it was not that underground scene that has thousands of people young people but the actually the experimental scene like has always been there I I discovered it a little bit like uh a few years later but uh it didn't have a lot of people grew and now it's like it's it's it's it's stronger and it's like it has more like uh I don't know artist and has become really interesting.

Paul:

And was it um because you're telling me about like the first underground scene the the one that was against the regime um was this and please forgive my ignorance here on on on the situation at the time but was that a dangerous thing to for people to voice dissent against the regime?

Alejandra:

I don't feel like in that context maybe in this concept that was dangerous.

Paul:

But yeah life was dangerous depending on where you live so in certain certain districts you you went out and you didn't come back I wasn't I was living in a middle class district so but I know that they they got some hit because of that because of the their dissensus more like in the I feel like in years that um previous years yeah that I I don't think at that moment like it was like the end of the thing you know the region yeah it was really like yeah so then you you had a period where you were playing in pop and electronic bands being in bands um I mean what made you step away from that and start your your solo practice was there like a clear moment or what was the process like for you for that yeah I I think I I went to a beer that I played in many bands and but it was not so serious you know it was it was just like discovering music how to play it how to be in a band and things like this and at some point like I got serious and I thought like maybe I do want to do this and then I've been alone yeah right okay so what what do you think that that period in bands gave you?

Alejandra:

Did it give you anything yeah of course like get you get practice I know you do friends I learned how to produce music actually that that was very good and I began producing music because I didn't like how other people mixed my music and produce it so I began doing myself and yeah I learned that and then because of that I I got a few jobs like producing things for for I don't know for TV and advertisement and stuff like this.

Paul:

So I I I did that too that you won't find my name is that in the some very weird embarrassing things but actually it's very good because if you want to learn the craft there's no better way than doing that and yeah yeah I mean do you feel like during that time um you knew what you wanted to go and do solo with your practice or was this like you're saying because I definitely feel like there's like a kind of a process of learning that we do when we're not always doing what we want to do like we know we're in bands, you know, like like you mentioned doing some music kind of commercial music as well that no one will ever find out and um these kinds of things that they they do give us so much like rich knowledge and just in terms of like the basics uh the stuff that we can then go and rewrite ourselves and and take elements from ourselves and reconfigure was was there like you know was your practice kind of emerging along along times line in in terms of like an idea yeah for me that speaks more about craft more than else not not about intention so much trying to do pop music is that you want to be a producer is the thing that will you know teach you how to do how to how to do things you know and then you can do whatever you want you know and that's great because I feel like for me building that building that the confidence to know okay I can imitate this song because sometimes like they I did this a couple of times where like for advertisement that they they mix the video with a famous song and then of of course they don't want to copyright so they want a very similar song but completely different yeah so they don't need to pay and yeah thousands of euros so like I did that and that was a very good like uh way of figuring out how people did things but that's only the craft I feel like uh this is important but you know then you need to bring yourself you know to the thing yeah but did do you think like the craft helps set up the way that you can bring yourself into yeah I think so yeah and I think um people talk a lot about like how your debut performance at Boilerroom in 2012 was like a point where people started to really kind of pick up on what you were doing. You know obviously I think Boiler Room is quite a problematic company now so we're not talking about it in terms of like now but back at the time um did it feel significant for you at the time yeah it felt significant because it was like 2012 that was the first time yeah it was 2012 I began playing by myself and I did a couple of songs and I sent them to this residency program of Red Bull Music Academy that existed then and doesn't exist anymore.

Alejandra:

And so they brought me to New York and they said to me like do you want to play and I say yes but I haven't played Aloan ever they like it doesn't matter and yeah so I played Boiler Room and I didn't play like that you know so yeah I was very nervous and I don't know if I don't think I do did a great job you know but for someone that is playing for the first time alone you know it's not it's not bad. I don't think so and it was very difficult because they have they they had this like limiter so it is it's not built for the kind of music that I I was playing. And I did it anyway and yeah I thought like it was yeah it was fun. But yeah after that I it it is true that it was like a sort of a breaking point but because it was the first time I was going out of Peru things changed in my mind also like in terms of I I didn't realize that there was anyone outside Peru interested like in what I was doing. Yeah when I was in New York I I realized okay for this residency was only two weeks better like I thought maybe I should connect more with the niche but outside you know this is why I ended up in Berlin yeah actually so you've been in Berlin for about 10 years now yes yeah um how how do you how how has that been for you do you feel like uh how has the city changed for you in that time but it hasn't become more expensive. Yeah yeah you arrived at the time where you could still get a one euro donor 150 yeah 150 but 150 yeah yeah a 150 donor yeah it's so funny that whenever you talk another person who lives in Berlin about like inflation they always bring the donor like it's like the unofficial currency is the way of talking about it yeah um you could you could still live cheap so it was easier and now it's a bit more difficult. I I don't feel it's is it's easy for newcomers anymore.

Paul:

Yeah because if you if you if you come now like I did like you know doing side jobs and trying to pay yourself like that's that has become more difficult because there's no place to live everything is expensive food is expensive you know but I love the scene yeah the scene is I love the people of the scene this is why I'm still here despite like everything that has happened in Germany for the past two years which is so fun yeah and despite everything being more expensive and despite well everything that was already bad about this like the word and the food the food is terrible it can sound quite crazy when you when you explain to people I've just got back from um three weeks in Australia where it's beautiful hot you know everyone's happy and you know apart from the culture I'm trying to kind of say yeah Berlin's great and then people are just like what you talking about yeah we're here for the music and for the art that's it yeah and it's great i i have seen so many good things you know i read so yeah when i went to sydney i i actually like how when people when people cross the streets they did they they they hi for you right with the hand they say like thank you right yeah i noticed that they do it on the if you get off the bus as well you say bye to the in in Melbourne like say bye to the bus driver and the bus driver says bye to you and I thought that was quite charming um and you pass the street and like in you're in in green you still like thank the people I thought that was so amazing that when I I was in for a week and then I came back to Germany and I said like I want to do this here and I began doing it. But how did it go? It didn't stick no and do you think that because we're talking about like the gentrification and the rising cost of living um because I I agree that I think that the scene are different creative scenes but the that are very kind of with a in Berlin with an international axis are are what makes Berlin still so special. Or one of the main things that makes Berlin still special do you feel with the rising costs and the difficult political situation that arises do you do you feel that that scene is under threat at all? Or do you think we can survive it?

Alejandra:

Look I think people will still come for uh musicians will still come but what I'm afraid of is that for example I I went to New York right and I said like I I I I I want to be like in a more international scene but I I couldn't move to New York because like it's too expensive, you know so I moved to Berlin like I learned a bit of German and everything. I saved some money and I got like a student pizza which is the easiest one to get and I could get pay a room working like taking care of children and working in service and stuff like this. Which is like minimum wage I could pay a room you know and still have time to to study and do mu do concerts you know I'm afraid that the people who will still come is because they have a like a better situation you know yeah so like I don't think you can work like for 500 euros and a bit more and pay a room and live in Berlin anymore. Yeah yeah I heard like rooms are like double of what they cost before and like the salaries have not like raised a lot so I think maybe you need we will need to work more and play less. So that kind of I'm not saying that it's the scene is gonna die but you're getting rid of of the bottom of it you know yeah rid of the people that don't have that much money but like it could be interesting also you know so well this is happening everywhere I guess you know yeah yeah it's it's already doing art like you know it's a something that is obviously uh easier if you're from a certain class and this is gonna be more difficult in music also and also like they have closed all these like small places where you could get gigs and yeah I was trying to get a gig for someone that I was coming and I I I I have been a little bit disconnected because I'm always strong but like I saw like okay this place is closed and this one and loophole it doesn't exist. Yeah loophole yeah yeah the adult place for example was great for for for people who are traveling just Berlin like doing the there's like the underground thing is like the thing that is uh first tripped away you know we can still have festivals with a little bit less money now but I'm I'm sad for the underground thing you will it still exists that we haven't uh maybe feel what is gonna happen in the future but um I'm afraid of the of the the raising cost and everything yeah yeah same I think it's uh it squeezes out um certain voices and we we get to only hear voices that can afford to uh I'm not saying everywhere but I'm not saying by the way but it makes it harder for for all voices to be heard and I think it also means that people that are still that struggling and still making music have to spend less time on their art.

Paul:

And I think that you know you need that time to explore and to the cheap rents is like a framework to allow people the time to make mistakes with their art and and to find find themselves through trial and error and through not having to turn everything into a product too soon you know and and I think out of that we get great things sometimes sometimes not sometimes I think like a another big landmark for you was the life of insects and what do you think I mean I I love it and I I mean I was listening it again to this morning I've got jet lag so I got up really early and just refreshed myself with listening to it and I I was sat in a cafe and just yeah um and what for you when you look back on that record what do you think that that gave you I did it during COID and actually at that time I could have begun doing the record that I released now because the ideas were already growing but instead of that I did the life of Insex because I thought I wanted to to work with uh concept uh that was like um what happened is that I was doing the the the music for for a for a film and in the film uh which I I haven't finished it yet because like it's from this guy that is an animator and he's doing a collage film and he's doing steel by steel for the right these can take years to do this.

Alejandra:

Yeah he's already in 10 years but I'm finishing a couple of months but it's like this and yeah there was a character that that had these the insects and that was also my idea uh that we should connect the insects um with like uh certain sounds and certain things that were happening in this world that was like a fantastic work and I really like the idea of the character and I at some point I felt like I this character was me and I I I bought some insects you know in Berlin in a store that you you can buy insects to feed your iguanas and stuff. Yeah and frogs we was just where we were staying in in Melbourne at one point we were giving insects to some pet frogs that we were house sitting yeah yeah exactly it was called they had that funny name like insect dealer the insect dealer right the insect dealer so I bought them like I I bought like the the scrokatoes uh from Madagascar and then how's the name of the thing in German is Grillen but I don't remember the one that makes noise when you're like the crickets we call them in English crickets yes yes this is what I was feeding last week yeah yeah I bought them and I I built these terriums for them for the movie actually but actually after living for with them for a while I thought okay maybe this movie is gonna take a decade more and I want to do a record also and I began but yeah it was very funny because if there was COVID and you could not go out and the perfect thing to do is being at home with your pets.

Paul:

Yeah totally totally make a record with your pets yeah and I mean I know we're running out of time but I but one thing I really wanted to ask you as well is I'm really interested in how your work crosses over um into like research and I'm trying to get a copy at the moment of switched on uh The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American women uh the collection that you co-edited with Luis Alvarado I apologize about the pronunciation there um and like I I was wondering like what like motivated you there like you know to to I mean I I think it's quite obvious that that the music you know that there's a lot of artists that are like don't get the exposure you know that's how I would see it but I don't want to put words in in your mouth with that but what motivated you to uh with that collection um yeah so I'm doing research and academic career like on on on the side at some point I thought that was going to be the music was on the side I feel yeah it didn't happen like this for me and I at some point I thought like maybe I just keep going because I actually like it a lot I actually like reading and busy so um I thought also like it may be the case that I need to pay the bills doing a real professional career.

Alejandra:

But just but it's funny about this is that nowadays I use my money that I do playing concerts to pay for for the that I have the way it goes yeah so actually I'm paying my academy my research with music so that's funny but yeah nevertheless like I began looking into this topic because I was interested for me for my music the first thing I did it was like a uh remix remix for crack for crack yeah and actually like it got a lot of hit that one like it was like in the list of the best remixes of I don't know but when I was doing the remix for me it was like doing research it was great because I was like hearing all the tracks like and trying to get more and asking people what happened and asking for books and actually at the end I finished the remix but it like it took me weeks and it was like sort of okay I learned a lot of this and I have been for a while also connected to the people who are researching these topics like the people who wrote in the book through different like um networks that are online for example and the the red the compositors latinas like Latin American Latin American composers that have like a group on Facebook and also like on female pressure and different like networks that work like in social media but also mailing list. I really like this because you can uh connect with different topics and have like different conversations with people and I think this is how this for example for for in the case of female pressure I I I know that they began like the man festivals to program a female you know uh artist they they did that and that was important because like actually it had an impact and they this did began doing this like uh every year like graphics about like how much female projects were in this or that festival so in a way I feel like this is great because it kind of shames people into yeah better you know yeah festival and you are like 90% uh just guys and you you you don't want to be in that that you know that uh site you know so they were really great about this and it was like uh this kind of commonal you know uh getting gathering you know and I I know like these groups work like this like they ask for help for different things they you post whatever you are doing conference but you also like connecting this more like political level of taking different actions and and trying to push diff uh trying to push you know and I feel like uh at some point like I realized okay I I know like this 10 or 15 or 20 women who are like doing research about these topics someone needs to come and put them together so I thought like maybe that's that's my place in it. I'm not researching but like I I just put them together and and and do it and I thought it was crazy of me but like at the end it worked out like everyone was super excited. But I feel like uh first it came the articulation of these things on you know online. They were already doing this so it my place was just to to to bring people together you know and say like okay we will do this and and I wanted to do it in English because I cannot do it in Spanish in Berlin actually. And I would do it in German but uh I wanted to to be articulated with the wider discourse and I thought like yeah later I can get a Spanish translation for it.

Paul:

Yeah yeah that is the sort of uh way to reach the wider discourse isn't it on a and um thank you and just finally I just wanted to ask like if you go back if you could go back to like your younger self just whilst you're starting to find your musical voice is there one thing that you would tell your younger self my younger self will listen to me. Yeah my younger self would not listen to me at all just go go away boomer you know boomer I know be patient yeah yeah I I don't have a lot of patience so I want to do everything you know even now but uh yeah yeah I think so that's a good one I think uh I a lot of artists I speak with say something along that lines um I think it's uh uh maybe it's something that like you know my my I I would say that to myself and also maybe my future self would say that to me now as well yeah yeah it takes time and like some sometimes you feel like uh you're not getting it anywhere you know yeah and and I and not not I'm not talking about like fame or economic I'm talking about like you know getting there with what you are doing you know like really understanding what this is about yeah and it can I feel for myself it can vary on day to day as well like if I have a day where the elements just don't go together it can feel like very yeah like I feel you you can feel worthless can't I can feel worthless you know um uh okay Alejandra thank you so much for talking with me today thank you I really appreciated it thank you okay so that was me Paul Hamford talking with Alejandra Cardenas aka Allohoop for Lost and Sound podcast and we had that conversation on the 13th of January 2026 thank you so much Alejandra for your time and thoughts sharing them with me and us there. A body like a home the fantastic album is out now on Nicholas Jar's label Other People and so yeah if you like the show and you haven't already please do give it a subscribe give the show a rating and a review on a platform of your choice and Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio Technica the global but still family run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges and microphones, they make studio quality yet affordable products because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So wherever you are in the world head on over to audiotechnica.com to check out all of that range of stuff the music that you hear at the beginning at the end of every episode of Lost and Sound is by Tom Giddens hyperlink as always in the podcast description so yeah that's it I hope whatever you're doing you're having a really fantastic one that your year has begun fantastically and I'll chat to you soon