Alpha
"best kept secret in the universe"
Location: Bristol
Website: http://www.alphaheaven.com/
Bio: In 1997, their debut album, the well-entitled Come from Heaven, manages to operate a delicate synthesis between pop classicism of the 60’s and the modernity ... (more)
of contemporary productions. In this album, Alpha acutely alludes to the greatest songwriters and arrangers of the past (Lee Hazlewood,
Scott Walker, Jimmy Webb or Burt Bacharach), without ever yielding to the facilities of sympathetic nostalgia or retro-futurism.
Quickly, the list of their admirers looks like a Who’s Who of the international pop scene : David Bowie, Radiohead, Pulp, or Madonna all rave about Come from Heaven, and eventually start on collaborations with the duet.
After the release in 1998 of the remix album Pepper and a European tour with Massive attack, it takes Alpha three years to return at their best. On their second album, The Impossible Thrill, Andy and Corin continue with the work started on Come from Heaven by enriching their musical palette with organic sounds and mixing strings to the most relevant samples.
Andy and Corin had now also gain a reputaion for their remixes, check out the list
Two years went by, full of events. With the end of Melankolic, the outfit is left isolated, and from now on exclusively depends on itself.
Alpha takes advantage of what could have been a restraint to assert their spirit of independance and tie new bonds, notably with France where they undertake fruitful collaborations with some artists (Avia) and Catalogue, now in charge of the band’s releases across the continent.
As usual, Andy and Corin crafted Star Gazing in their own home studio, in an intimate atmosphere disturbed only by a few births and other moves... Carrying on their work of sonic exploration and experimentation, they recorded about fifty tracks before proceeding to a strict selection. The Impossible Thrill outcome is strikingly coherent.
This album features the regular vocalists of Alpha (Martin Barnard, Wendy Stubbs and Helen White), but also a newcomer, Kelvin Swaybe.
The aforementioned, a long-time friend of the duet and collaborator of Adrian Utley (Portishead), effortlessly managed to merge in the universe of Alpha, as it shows on Elvis and I Just Wanna Make You, two of the most stunning tracks of the record. So no Revolution there, contrary to what the cover of The Beatles’ classic released last year in France could have suggested.
Only the deepening, the perfecting of a skillfuness for songwriting, arranging and producing.
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