Article
Ten Questions Eric Quach

Albums
Actress
Ellen Allien
The Alps
Aniline
Anodyne
Tommy Babin's Benzene
Maya Beiser
Pier Bucci
Budd & Wright
Celer
Ceremony
Richard Chartier
Deceptikon
Deepchord & Echospace
Marcel Dettmann
Dirac
Efdemin
GéNIA
Guillaume & C. Dumonts
Hammock
Helvacioglu & Boysen
Richard A Ingram
Inhabitants
Marsen Jules
Akira Kosemura
Manual
Dom Mino'
Teruyuki Nobuchika
Nono/ Wakabayashi
Olan Mill
Originalljudet
Fabio Orsi
M.Ostermeier
Rene Hell
Jeffrey Roden
J. Rogers
Roll The Dice
Secret Cities
Soundpool

Compilations / Mixes
Main Control Board
SEED X: Part I - III

EPs
Alternative Networks Vol. 2
Aural Diptych Series # 1
Aural Diptych Series # 2
Celer
Deerhoof vs OneOne
Filterwolf
Incite/
Ketem
Kogumaza
Yann Novak
Poratz
Quiroga
Repeat Orchestra
Sepalcure
Sub Loam
v4w.enko
The Zeitgeist EP

DVD
Stephen Vitiello

The Alps: Le Voyage
Type Recordings

Le Voyage, The Alps' fourth album, is quite literally a journey in the sense that each of its pieces offers a different stylistic stopping point, which naturally makes the album feel like a ten-episode travelogue. Interspersed with short noise pieces and tape experiments (such as “Marzipan,” a trippy collage of classical strings, poured water, and other noises, and “The Lemon Tree,” a Pink Floyd-esque kaleidoscope of fleeting impressions), the album otherwise hews to a fairly straightforward script as it shifts its attention from one style to another.

As inviting an introduction as its welcoming title intimates, “Drop In” starts the album on a plaintive and bucolic note with bright acoustic picking, piano sprinkles, and an occasional atmospheric shudder of electric guitar. While “Crossing the Sands” opts for Tortoise-styled post-rock rhythmning and wah-wah guitar psychedelia, “St. Laurent” serves up a laid-back acoustic setting one could imagine as the soundtrack for lazy beachside lolling. A trippy dimension comes strongly to the fore in many tracks, including “Saturno Contro,” whose placid drift of shimmering guitars precedes the sitar-fueled entrancement of “Black Mountain.” Not surprisingly, the album's deepest plunge into astral travel occurs during the ten-minute soundscape “Le Voyage.”

The follow-up that Jefre Cantu-Ledesma (Tarentel), Alexis Georgopoulos (ARP), and Scott Hewicker (Troll) have crafted to the well-received III is refreshingly succinct—its forty-one minutes of sun-drenched folk-psychedelia flash by quickly—and is well-pitched on ambition grounds too, with the group's aim high but not so high that the material begins to feel overburdened or weighted down by pomposity.

June 2010