Alison Wonderland, aka Sydney-born DJ and producer Alex Sholler, named her fourth album GHOST WORLD because it described her state of mind while making it. “I didn’t really feel like I fit in anywhere, that I was in limbo wandering this earth, unsure of what my path was and what the point of what I was doing was,” she tells Apple Music. “I did feel quite lost.” There were, she says, “a lot of turning cogs going on at the time”, including the birth of her first child and “a lot of health problems”. She was also playing fewer shows than usual, exacerbating the uncomfortable uncertainty she felt about her place in the world. “I had a bit of an existential crisis to be honest,” she admits. If there was a North Star throughout this period, it was the 2023 album GENESIS by her alter ego, Whyte Fang. Created without any concerns for streaming numbers or musical trends, it was the catalyst for her approach to GHOST WORLD. “I just realised that I don’t want any outside influences. I was like, ‘I really need to dig deep and make this my sound; something that sounds completely like me.’” Collaborations were organised organically with friends and artists she admires, while, sonically, she revisited the trap-leaning direction of 2015 debut Run, albeit with a more modern aesthetic (“Get Started”). Here, Sholler takes Apple Music through GHOST WORLD, track by track. “Ghost World” “I had written the rest of the album and I didn’t have my title track. And I just went, ‘What is GHOST WORLD? What does it sound like?’ When I closed my eyes, I kept hearing these ’80s synths and John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream, and that’s what I saw opening the album. I didn’t think it should [feature] my voice; I didn’t think it should be a man’s voice. I just saw in my head this innocent voice untouched by the world. So I called [my two-year-old son] Max over, and I told him to say, ‘ghost world’ and ‘hello’, and he nailed it.” “Get Started” “I was listening to all the stuff that I had made earlier—maybe five tracks—before making this decision [to] be the most ‘you’ you can be. This was the first one when I came back and went, ‘OK, now I’ve got to kick some arse. And I’ve got to kick my own arse. I just want to feel alive.’ The lyrics are about me pumping myself up to get to that next level and get through this and feel like, you know, I’ll take anything right now to just get me motivated. The only way out is through. I was pumping myself up really.” “iwannaliveinadream” “It’s about my health and my journey in hospital and having surgeries and needing to escape into this dreamlike state. The only thing that I was really listening to at the time to calm me down was more psychedelic stuff, because it was really removed from where I was. So ‘iwannaliveinadream’ is a song that helped me. I just wanted it to sound how my brain was feeling.” “Heaven” (with Ninajirachi) “I knew I wanted it to be a very nostalgic but current version of something that I would hear during the Myspace days. I had tried so many different drops with so many different people. I’m such a fan of Nina, and I hit her up and said, ‘Hey, I have this song. I don’t have any drops. Here’s the two verses.’ Two days later, she sent me back the song with the drops, and I was like, ‘Oh my god. This is it.’ She completed me with this song.” “Call Me (r u alone?)” “It was supposed to be an interlude, but I’d taken the riff from ‘Heaven’ and I wanted to make something that almost sounded like an old A$AP Rocky beat, or like a Clams Casino-type beat. I ended up just riffing over that and it turned into this. When I got to the end I thought, ‘I need to switch this up.’ I’d just watched this documentary on Hitchcock, and he was talking about how he likes people watching his movies thinking they know where they’re going, and then he’s just like, ‘Psych! That’s not where you’re going!’ And that’s exactly what I did with the end of that track.” “Lost & Found” (with MEMBA) “The whole thing is like, ‘I got lost, now I’m found again. My feet touched the ground again.’ It’s all about grounding yourself. Come back down to Earth. It’s going to be OK. Even if you feel lost, you’re going to find your path. That’s what this song is about.” “Everything Comes in Waves” “I was listening to Sleigh Bells and MGMT. I wrote the whole thing about how in the music industry or in your career or in your life, everything comes in waves. So everyone, just do your thing. I say, ‘Fuck the people, let them rave.’ Like, let everyone live their life, because everything comes in waves. It’s a big song that felt like freedom.” “PSYCHO” (with Erick the Architect, QUIX, MEMBA) “I started ‘PSYCHO’ with MEMBA in their studio and it was just us, and then QUIX heard the track and messaged me and said, ‘Can I have the stems? Can I just remix it for fun?’ He made this crazy drop and I went, ‘Oh, this is better than the original drop. We have to put it in.’ Then I went, ‘It needs more chaos, we need another person.’ I called Erick [the Architect]. I knew I wanted it to have a really chaotic energy and a lot of personalities. [Lyrically, it’s] a word vomit. I just felt like I was on my best behaviour for so many things at the time and I was holding a lot of stuff in.” “Sirens” “When [I felt] really lost, I would close my eyes and envision myself on a boat in the middle of this deep, dark ocean where I can’t see anything but ocean around me. That’s exactly what this song is about. It’s about sirens bringing me deeper into that hole. I felt like I was drowning and being pulled down by my own thoughts and reality that I’d created for myself. I just saw myself on this boat with nothing to grab on to, and the only way out was down.” “Voices” (with DJ_Dave) “I wrote it about getting haunted by an ex. Not literally, but you move on, and I’m so happily married and I’ve got this incredible family now, and it’s just a different life. But some people’s energy will linger with you. Even though we will never really talk again, I feel like you’ll always have a place and a voice in my mind, and I got OK with that. I’m at peace with this.” “XTC” (with Whyte Fang) “I was jamming on my laptop and I was making a really weird beat, and I was like, ‘Oh, it sounds like Whyte Fang.’ I went, ‘Well, I guess I could collab with Whyte Fang.’ It felt like the only way to do it, because, for me, Whyte Fang’s a lot more minimal and industrial, and this is exactly how that song sounded to me. And very simple. That’s how I ended up collabing with myself!” “Again? Fuck.” “This song was particularly weird for me, because I was so sick of writing ‘poor me’ things. I had gone through my fourth miscarriage. And I just needed to have a sense of humour about it, because I was going through surgery, and a lot of very complicated things. For it to be my fourth time of that happening, it was just like, ‘Geez, you know, I need a sense of humour.’ I lyrically had this idea, but I didn’t want to write it over something sad. I wanted to write it over something that had a sense of humour, and that’s how that song came about.” “Floating Away” “I was sitting on my couch with a friend of mine, Dylan [Ragland]. I was like, ‘I want to make almost a speed-house track.’ Dylan is half of SIDEPIECE, and he’s really good with that kind of genre. I was just like [sings], ‘floating away’—that’s kind of how I was feeling that day. My kid was standing there, and he was twirling while we were making it. It was just a very weird thing.” “Is This the End?” “That song I’m nervous for people to hear. It’s like a huge ego death for me. In my head, it’s such an embarrassing admission to feel like you’re replaceable and you’re not the hot shiny new thing. It was like, ‘Is this the end of my career?’ It was the first time where I verbalised that and went, ‘You know, I’m fine.’ I’ve gotta remind myself, I’m fine. It’s an acceptance.”