Alpinestars – Burning up

Un tema muy asequible a estas horas, nada estridente, tranquilo y continuo. Hoy es martes, es muy temprano y no queremos sobresaltos ¿verdad?…

Un poco sobre Alpinestars, en ingles, si, sigue siendo martes y muy temprano como para ponerse a traducir 😉

WHO? The Alpinestars: Richard Woolgar and Glyn Thomas, two Manchester based artists with a fetish for electricity, presenting their second long player, White Noise. A multi-dimensional amalgam of middle-European influences, it comprises 11 tracks of driving machine-funk, moody elegies and class-A disco music. Depeche Mode, Giorgio Moroder, Phoenix, and New Order are some of the people who it may remind you of. Quite possibly at the same time.

HOMOELECTRIC Famously, Alpinestars only came into being after the promoters of (sadly deceased) Manchester hotspot Homoelectric (imagine 500 Soft Cell groupies in a down-at-heel lesbian cabaret bar) challenged Glyn and Richard to write an hour of peachy keen autobahn synth-pop. In just over a week. Taking their name from Glyn’s mountain bike, they fulfilled the commission with about 20 minutes to spare. “The first time we ever did a gig as Alpinestars we couldn’t believe how people took notice,” says Richard. “Previously, we’d put months of effort into a band, and there’d be eight people there. And half of them wouldn’t be arsed. As Alpinestars everyone was really up for it!”Inspired, and signed a few days later, the majority of debut album B.A.S.I.C was written in the same way, tunes banged out in a day, at home. White Noise has been a far more considered, studio-based affair, but they’re still masochists.

ICE and snow figure highly in The Alpinestars mindset. “I like skiing- it’s beautiful and quiet,” says Richard, but it runs deeper than that. Titles like “Snow Patrol” and “New Ice Age” merely hint at the chilly, yet oddly cosy, atmosphere that pervades White Noise.

THE UNEXPECTED GUEST Pray silence for “Carbon Kid” on which Placebo’s Brian Molko pulls out all the stops to give a kick-ass edge to the futurist rock onslaught on human cloning and citizen X. Further evidence of Alpinestars desire to explore an increasingly diverse musical mosaic.

EXPECTATION Unlike its predecessor B.A.S.I.C, White Noise contains a great deal of a) vocals (both Richard and Glyn sing) and b) live guitars, bass, strings and drums. “Halfway through a year of doing gigs and promotion for the last album, we knew this is what we were going to do when we got the chance,” says Richard. “We wanted to get away from the sampler duo mentality.” Adds Glyn, “We didn’t feel constrained, just bored. We wanted to make things more song-based to move away from this plethora of one-paced, chill-out bollocks.”

E IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT “It’s a challenge to write stuff that people like en-mass,” says Richard. “It’s easy to write an album of well dodgy weird shit. The challenge lies in evolving, and maintaining quality and appeal.” So is this their pop album? “Maybe! It’s easy to make ‘intellectual’ music, throwing weird sounds and cut-ups about, when, in fact, you’re not being intellectual, you’re just pleasing yourself. The challenge comes in being different, simple and focused,” remarks Glyn.

It’s a challenge Alpinestars have risen to spectacularly. They’re produced a compellingly cool album of 21st century pop. Turn up the White Noise.

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