Alpha's Come From Heaven: Buy It!
Bristol group create the ultimate in jazzy, dreamlike, chill-out
© Ben Wood
Massive Attack's former labelmates Alpha took the 'Bristol sound' into new dimensions of drifting, languorous beauty with Comes From Heaven's jazzy, soulful soundscapes
If It's Good Enough for the Velvet Undergound...
Everybody who loves music knows that many of the finest albums take years to be truly appreciated. Indeed, many of the greatest acts ever are cruelly ignored in their lifetime. Love, the Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, Shuggie Otis… the list is a long one. Enter Alpha.
Massive Attack and the 'Bristol Sound'
Alpha, who are still going strong today, are one of the many acts who sprung out of the fertile Bristol scene in the mid-1990s. Like their more successful peers Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky, they shared a fascination for slow tempos, soulful vocals and obscure movie soundtracks, and an unashamed love of beauty. Unlike the above, they failed to connect with the public in major numbers. But as with all cults, the listeners who get Alpha, really get them.
Come From Heaven
1997’s Come From Heaven was the band’s first album, released on Massive Attack’s Melankolic label, and is generally acknowledged as their masterpiece. Producers Colin Dingley and Andy Jenks created sublime mood-pieces combining orchestral samples from their favourite 60s records; laid-back beats, keys and textures; live strings; and the exquisite vocals of Wendy Stubbs, Martin Barnard and Helen White. Dingley himself has described it as “music to dream to”.
The record is less a collection of songs than a patchwork of moods, some tracks purely instrumental, with vocals drifting in and out. The cover art sums up the record; a blurred front cover pic of a boy on a beach; and abstract landscapes showing the sun rising (or setting) on a pastoral scene. Alpha’s songs, like their titles (Nyquil, Hazeldub, SomewhereNotHere) are impressionistic, blurred snapshots of emotion collected in tranquillity.
Unlike their aforementioned peers, Alpha’s music is jazzier, and the mood generally less ‘urban’ and paranoia-filled. It’s more uplifting, but gossamer-thin, like the soundtrack to an imaginary French film you dreamed. If you could produce fluffy white clouds in musical form, this is what they would sound like.
Like Brian Eno or the great dub producers, Dingley and Jenks realise that the spaces between the notes are as important as the notes themselves. They create such a sense of spaciousness that the music cocoons you, and takes you to another place where time moves in slow-motion. This is the perfect album for long, languorous afternoons spent with a loved one, or in smoke-filled contemplation.
Comes From Heaven is a seamless mix of Bacharach and Davis samples, film dialogue, Sylvia Plath poetry, gently pulsing jazzy rhythms and soulful singing. Certain lines stand out (‘I’m scared to be heartless… There’s only one and that is you’; ‘I should have listened to you. I’m very sorry’). It’s subtly emotional and romantic, the kind of album that gets under your skin without you realising it. CFH creates its own world, and the world outside disappears for the duration.
Follow-up albums: Pepper, The Impossible Thrill
The band followed their debut with the pointless remix album Pepper, where CFH’s subtle beauty was incongruously funked up into generic trip-hop and drum’n’bass by the likes of The Underdog, More Rockers and Bomb the Bass. As is often the case, it didn’t really sound like their own record. The second ‘proper’ album was 2001’s The Impossible Thrill, after which Alpha were left to their own devices when Melankolic folded.
The Don't Touch Years
Since then, Alpha have soldiered on, releasing 3 more albums on their own Don’t Touch label (2003’s Stargazing, and the two spoken word-and-instrumental mix albums Lost in a Garden of Clouds Pts 1 and 2). Their new album The Sky is Mine comes out in September. They have also been much in-demand as producers, remixing Massive Attack’s ‘Inertia Creeps’ and songs by Jarvis Cocker and Horace Andy. But for the best introduction to the beautifully drowsy world of Alpha, check out Come From Heaven.
