Warp Record’s Children of Alice eponymous debut is a patchwork of mini ambient soundscapes that run the gamut of emotions.
As a note aside from the review here, I’m going to go out on a limb and state that this is not what many would refer to as music. The album is eerie, strange and at points, fairly unnerving and borderline scary. However, take the time to truly sit and listen to this set, or at least the main song, Harbinger of Spring and you will be rewarded as if it were truly a performance piece of art, as opposed to a more traditional album. As such the work is going unrated on the ‘Out of 10’ scale, it’s much the same as reviewing an actual physical piece of art, it is entirely subjective and everyone will take something different from it.
The band (if they can be labelled as such) is the project of former Broadcast members, James Cargill and Roj Stevens (the group’s name is a tribute to the late Broadcast singer, Trish Keenan, a lifelong fan of Alice in Wonderland) and the addition of Focus Group’s Julian House. The group have used this platform to expand on their renowned, dreamy electronic soundscapes.
The album sits at what would usually be a paltry length of 4 songs. But this is not the case with a marathon opening track spanning over twenty minutes. Around about the halfway point for the whole albums length.
Children of Alice produce music, of a sort, just not the sort you’d find on a standard radio station. The word soundscape is hugely fitting to their work. Despite the main track, Harbinger of Spring being constructed of dozens of 30 second soundbites, the work is shockingly coherent, or at least as much as you can expect from something that manages to feel like The Wicker Man in sound form.
The experience is liable to make you question the very structure and fabric of reality, given the seemingly chaotic approach to musical composition. Yet oddly enough, the constant flux and changing of sound into small bitesize chunks is strangely satisfying in the same way a full length experimental electronic or even jazz track might be. The effect is like taking a recording of traditional flute music, condensing all the textures and layers for a minute while retaining the methodical pace, and repeating the process over and over again. Bizarre but excellent.
Children of Alice, is a true art record in that the process undergone to make such music is a journey in and of itself. This self-titled debut sounds like it was absolutely exhausting to make, which is why we listen to music of this sort in the first place; the struggle and challenge presented here is worthy our attention if not for pleasure’s sake alone, but for the varied breadth of emotion that each mini soundtrack evokes. Everything from mystery, happiness, even sexually charged tension happens in an instant.
Author: Steve, Southgate store
