On Sept. 16th ATP Recordings will release the third album from Alexander Tucker, Portal. The album is available on CD and LP, featuring artwork from Tucker. He will also perform on Sept. 20 at All Tomorrow’s Parties in Monticello, NY as part of the ATP / My Bloody Valentine curated event. He will play a few other select dates in the US, more info. on that coming soon.
Bio:
Texts of this nature usually require the author to make fashionable or wilfully oblique references to artists past and present. Portal, the third Alexander Tucker long player for ATP Recordings is a work of such bewitching splendour that any such comparisons would read like hyperbole, thus doing it a great disservice. Even Tucker’s Previous albums (Old Fog and Furrowed Brow) seem like stepping stones in the wake of Portal. But if we must draw comparisons then lets say Chicago musician/composer Jim O’ Rourke — both are unparalleled in their pairing of the 20th Century avant-garde techniques of composers like Stockhausen and Steve Reich with the archaic sounding free-folk of John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Loren Connors.
The late Karlheinz Stockhausen envisaged music where “instead of very precisely formed single notes there are little complexes little crystalline blooms that pass through a register form”. During Portal, Tucker’s finger-picked guitar lines become indistinguishable from the more traditional string arrangements and voice. These melodic clusters interweave like the paths incurved by a figure skater. This is still to say nothing of Tucker’s voice, which sounds as if it is emanating from a ghost channel on an ancient mixing desk rather than appear sung on top of the epochal arrangements. It’s a voice comparable perhaps to Meddle era David Gilmour or John Martyn on Solid Air. These are big claims of course but then Portal is a work of such extraordinary majesty that even trying to surmise it in words seems like a heresy. If you disagree after listening, then I’m sorry to inform you that you are spiritually dead.
– Tony F Wilson.
ALEXANDER TUCKER
Sept. 20 – Monticello, NY All Tomorrow’s Parties
Portal (ATP)
Street Date: Sept. 16, 2008
1. Poltergeists Grazing
2. Veins To The Sky
3. Omnibaron
4. Husks
5. Bell Jars
6. Energy For Dead Plants
7. Another World
8. Here
ALEXANDER TUCKER LINKS:
Myspace: www.myspace.com/alexandertucker
Press Materials: www.atpfestival.com/atp-recordings/alexander-tucker