Part of the challenge when thinking about guitar music within an experimental context lies in the constant need to innovate, to sound fresh, and to fit the sound of the guitar into unlikely, unpredictable or uncertain situations. That’s what drives things forward. Alpha Maid emerged towards the end of the last decade, linked to Curl – the collective and record label founded by Mica Levi, Coby Sey and Brother May – and has been releasing music fairly regularly ever since, both under her own name and through collaborations. Her most recent album, Is this a queue, released last year, attracted attention and earned her a place on several ‘best of the year’ lists.
It’s an album with a hybrid character, the result of having been recorded over several years; whilst there’s a certain lack of cohesion between the tracks, it possesses a clear identity in terms of craftsmanship and artistic direction. It is, in a very particular way, a guitar-driven record, in which dub-infused textures emerge as guiding threads for a concept of raw, gritty dance music, with hints of This Heat, A Certain Ratio, Slint, Black Dice and, more recently, Still House Plants or caroline. None of this was new to those familiar with his work; it was simply the refinement of an idea to create a cutting-edge sound, fully aligned with the contemporary concept of urban music: chaotic, uncertain, hazy, directionless and with no great desire for a single foundation – preferring instead to be grounded in several.
What can we expect from Alpha Maid live? Something that throws us off balance in unpredictable ways, somewhere between noise/dub and the clamour of information. At the same time, it is comforting in the way it seems to listen to us and makes us want to be heard, with a sound that is as much a statement as it is a response, constantly evolving, convinced that the outcome is as unpredictable as it is pessimistic. Isn’t that what the future is like?
AS
