Alpha Maid ⟡ Polido
Live music 14€
Saturday 17 October · 22:00
A concert by Alpha Maid, presenting experimental guitar music between noise/dub and the noise of information, in the vein of her recent album Is this a queue. A show that destabilises and comforts along unpredictable paths.
Part of the challenge when thinking about guitar music associated with an experimental plane lies in the constant challenges of innovating, of sounding new, of fitting the guitar sound into unlikely, unpredictable/uncertain situations. That moves things forward. Alpha Maid emerged in the late 2010s, associated with Curl, the collective and label of Mica Levi, Coby Sey and Brother May, and has been releasing regularly since then, under her own name and in collaborations. Her most recent album, Is this a queue, from last year, drew attention and earned her a place on several best-of-the-year lists. An album with a hybrid character, the result of having been recorded over several years, with a somewhat absent coherence between tracks, but a clear identity of know-how and of where it wants to go. It is, in a very particular way, a guitar record, in which dub clouds become present as guiding threads for an idea of dirty dance, with hints of This Heat, A Certain Ratio, Slint, Black Dice and, more recently, Still House Plants or caroline. All of this was no novelty for those who followed her work; it was just the refining of an idea of creating a forward sound, completely identified with the idea of today's urban music: chaotic, uncertain, smoky, directionless — or rather than a great desire to have one foundation, it prefers to be based on several. What to expect from Alpha Maid live? Something that destabilises us along unpredictable paths, between noise/dub and the noise of information. At the same time, it comforts us by the way it seems to listen to us and makes us want to be heard, with a sound that is as much an affirmation as a response, constantly evolving, convinced that the result is as unpredictable as it is pessimistic. Isn't that the future? AS.