Alpha, music delivered from the heavens

It seems that we've received some visits from other countries. We don't know if they are portuguese-speaking people so we're going to try this. Let us know if you like it!


(Note – while I write this article, I’m immersed in the sound that drowns my small office. Indiscriminately, all of Alpha’s albums play on my iTunes)

The very first time I came into contact with Corin Dangley and Andy Jenk’s band was on a promo CD that came with Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine” album. So it happens that, at the time, they owned a small label, Melankolic, due to their already huge success, and its catalogue presented the work of an eclectic and fruitful panoply of artists, among them being this duo named Alpha.

I can’t quite remember the very first time that I heard them (if instead of Heard you used the word bury-myself-in-a-chair-and-drown-in-their-sound, that would more appropriately describe the sensation and the feeling that I would like to invoke, but for now it will suit me just fine). But, up until today, up until this very moment, hearing “Sometimelater” or “SomewhereNotHere” on their first album, “ComeFromHeaven”, soft spoken by the liquid voices of Martin Barnard and Wendy Stubbs, respectively, leaves me happy… Yes, happy would be the proper word! There are others: Rejoiced; Serene; Delighted. But sometimes simplicity is the best friend when one looks for words to describe emotions. Alpha’s simple beauty on this album leaves me, pure and simply, happy. I don’t know if for you, the reader, this emotion would want to be attained but, since I proposed myself to doing this, I think I should, to the best of my abilities, describe the feeling, the ecstasy, that fills me when I listen to their music.

In the 10 years that followed little to nothing has disappointed me. There was a bump on the road called “TheImpossibleThrill” (a second original album that, still, travelled waters more voluptuous than some of their less inspired colleagues), but there were also more than enough delicious walks on roads bordered by sounds filled with beauty. Even B-Sides from “ComeFromHeaven”, all compiled on “Pepper”, had songs like “Firefly (Receiver Mix)”, harvested from a sleep-like and disarming pounding rhythm, again served by the voice of Martin Barnard. And also “Stargazing” with “A Perfect End” or “Elvis”. And finally the new album, “The sky is mine”, with it’s desperate “For the wages”.


Alpha would be let go by its original label (talk to Mariah Carey about this little thing) but still continue the quest on their own with donttouchrecordings. They were born in the 90’s on the Trip-Hop scene and still they carry on, losing themselves in some of their most direct influences, namely OST’s, Jimmy Web and Burt Bacharach, promoting a sound, which, as they say, doesn’t fall to the easiness of nostalgia and retro-futurism.

Give yourselves a walk through their myspace page. Buy the albums. Maybe, just maybe, like it happened to me, you will find one of those bands that stay with you for a lifetime. There’s nothing complicated about that, is there?