Note: Some questions and answers have been slightly edited for brevity and clarity.
When Calva Louise pick up their instruments, they’re not just making noise, they’re opening portals.
If you ask Calva Louise who they are, they won’t just tell you—they’ll build you a universe. “I’m Jess. I’m the singer, guitarist, and keyboardist, pianist. And I write the songs and make the videos,” Jess Allanic introduces, while bassist Alizon Taho adds modestly, “I play bass and just look after the gear.” Ben Parker, drummer and de facto sherpa for the band’s heavy lifting, completes the whimsical triad.
From the fringes of Venezuela, France, and New Zealand, Calva Louise has carved out a world entirely their own. Their new album, Edge of the Abyss, showcases an audacious meld of punk, metal, electronica, and Latin influence. If you’re looking for a starting point, the band collectively agrees “‘Aimless’ is a good place to start because being a multicultural band ourselves and being from different places in the world … it’s pretty varied in that respect.”
The journey to Edge of the Abyss was anything but linear. “When Alizon and me moved to England, I think our biggest obstacle was money,” Jess recounts. “You go somewhere where you don’t know anyone and you don’t really have any family and then just work to survive, then you just can’t break that cycle.” Yet through the instability, including language barriers—”Ben and I couldn’t communicate. We were just, I mean, smiling,” Alizon remembers—they found resilience.
When asked what advice they’d give to artists in similarly uncertain terrain, Jess offers, “Following that abstract path, not knowing which steps are going to be [right], but kind of figuring out what’s the game of your life.” Taho adds, “You got to keep it authentic and be open to the experiences … even if they’re not what you expected, they are still a path.”
For Taho, forming a band was always a necessity, not a whim. “I just knew that being in a band was the best thing you could ever do,” he says. It wasn’t until meeting Jess that “it finally happened.”
The plot unraveling in Edge of the Abyss began long before the band’s formation, rooted in Jess’s childhood paintings in Venezuela. “This story was building, so when we made the band it was like, we need to incorporate this story. That’s Louise’s descent—Louise is the character who experiences all of this. But it was very hard trying to conceptualize something that will require so much time and money and effort when at the same time you’re trying to survive, you’re trying to convince people to look at this idea,” she shares. A sci-fi epic about a character named Louise navigating parallel worlds, it captures Calva Louise’s lived experiences of walking “on a loose rope, where you could fall any moment … but you still do it because it’s the only way.”
Even their band name is steeped in meaning. “It comes from an absurd play called The Bald Soprano,” says Ben. “A lot of the language within that play was people kind of not understanding each other, or saying things and not really making sense … One of the reasons why we picked it is because with the language barrier we had at the start, when we met, often, one of us would say one thing and another one of us would be like, ‘why are you talking about the kitchen table?’” Jess is quick to add, “I feel like the more you grow up, the more you realize that even people that speak the same language don’t really understand each other. There is this lack of connection sometimes that makes people isolated … Through living this absurdity together, it’s like we’re on the same page.” As for the genesis of the character Louise, Jess reveals, “I wanted to have a girl character name, because I wanted to add the character. And Louise, the name, was chosen by Alizon.”
Edge of the Abyss carries a deeply personal message: existence against the odds. “The whole thing is about kind of being able to exist,” Jess delves in. “If you’re born in the description of the world that is being given, you know, if a kid is born in a country with not much money, from not a big family or whatever, there’s this description, yeah, you cannot be like like a big doctor, you cannot be this, because you’re born where you’re born; you’re a victim of your circumstances; these are the consequences; this is how the world is, you cannot change it … But who’s people to tell a child, a kid or a person, that they are not able to.” Their music is a rebellion against the idea that circumstances dictate destiny.
When it comes to favorites on the album, the band’s choices reflect their emotional investment. Ben choses “Tunnel Vision” and “Barely a Response,” saying “they’re both just really fun to play.” Jess is drawn to “El Umbral” because “I really feel cathartic singing, ‘I just want to exist.’” Jess also recognizes “The Abyss” as a standout, “which was supposed to be called in Spanish ‘El Abismo,’ but I forgot. So I called it in English, but the lyrics are in Spanish … It’s the kind of techno song, but I just really feel while writing [it], especially the lyrics, it felt OK to not know where we’re going or where we’re heading. And so that song feels comforting to me.” For Alizon, it’s “Aimless,” noting “it’s just so fun to play live … all the variety of sound and influences and all the components.”
Looking ahead, Calva Louise remains hungry and hopeful. “We’ve got the album coming out on the 11th of July,” Alizon teases, “and more videos that we’re currently working on, like literally right now.”
Edge of the Abyss is not just a record; it’s a survival story, a dreamscape, and a manifesto—a breathtaking continuation of a journey that began in a split living room in Caracas and will soon vibrate across the world’s stages as Calva Louise’s upcoming tour plans impend. As Jess reminds us, “Art is the most kind of unbothering thing in the world. I want for every artist to feel like you don’t bother anyone, and don’t let people bother you into not wanting to create creation. It doesn’t hurt anybody. It just gives to that niche of person that are going to value your work.”
Welcome to the universe of Calva Louise. Step carefully—you’re dancing on the Edge of the Abyss.
Jess Allanic on the album cover and concept:
“Edge of the Abyss is kind of like a double thing, because edge of the abyss is this story told in a different layer, in a more concrete way. The story that was Rhinoceros, it went through euphoria that we started telling with Over The Threshold, but it’s kind of like another layer that is clearer, and then that is more skilled and more fulfilled. And at the same time, the cover is this spaceship called the ‘Hedron Ship,’ which is where there’s this world and then there’s the other world called ‘The Fractal’ where there’s many worlds, but in the edge of the abyss, and the euphoric and Rhinoceros and all that, it’s between those two worlds, and the spaceship, which harvest energy … And we got in the cover as well, a double, which that’s the idea that we are travelers, like us normal people, we are meant to travel with the travelers, and the doubles are like our counterparts in this other world. So that’s one side of it; the side of all the songs telling the stories of the characters, especially impeccable are the ones that tell it more in a kind of like narrative way, the journey of the character. And at the same time, edge of the abyss is because that’s our life. That’s how we live on; involuntarily, but voluntarily at the same time. It’s getting out of the loop, getting out of that vicious circle, but at the same time, walking on a loose rope, where you could fall at any moment, and walking by the edge of the abyss, where you can fall in at any moment, but you still do it because it’s the only way. It’s the only path to follow to be fulfilled. In a way, abstractly, it connects really well with sci-fi and with horror and with adventure, because you don’t know where they’re going to end up, unscathed, are they gonna end up surviving the adventures that they’re going through? But you really want to see what’s going to happen.”
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