Following on from their 2018 album frozenthere, genre-defying four-piece altopalo have dropped their latest single “Nocturne”. A song about staying “up past your bedtime”, it explores the delights that the nighttime holds in a fashion that blurs the lines between ambient electronic and guitar-driven music.

Describing the track themselves, altopalo say they set out to make “insomnia danceable,” whilst capturing that moment when “you twist and turn in bed, filled with childish worry. The mind’s envisioning of shadow ghouls and manticores the only thing between you and that sweet, sweet closure of a day well-lived.”

Building on the sound that they have curated for themselves, “Nocturne” displays meandering loops and varying progressions that draw the listener into a mesmerising and eclectic soundscape. It possesses a near R&B vocal performance but also has the power of a rock ballad. It seemingly emulates Radiohead in places, calling to mind the drawl of Thom Yorke. This may sound disjointed, but it’s unsurprising given the background of the band; altopalo were originally a staple of the New York rock scene before they expanded their sound to become a more rounded, genre-bending kaleidoscope.

“Nocturne” culminates itself together into a shifting puzzle, like a riddle slowly solving itself and unfurling to the listener. The more the track shifts and morphs, the more that is revealed. With its dreamy and atmospheric lightness, “Nocturne” obviously lives up to its namesake. Yet the swinging ascending and rapidly descending howling evokes the wildness of the nighttime, the unknown and the sense of risk that comes from the darkness.

The song is charmingly offbeat, experimenting with tempo to create a buzzing excitement that’s offset by the honey drizzled vocal stylings of Rahm Silverglade. By combining the twizzling chimes of some kind with the clanging of the steady drums, altopalo have sent the listener on a hallucinogenic journey.

It’s no shock to learn that their recording process, which consists of long improvisations that are recorded in full before being cut into sizeable songs, heavily shapes their music. “Nocturne” is just a gleaming example of a mindset where there are no wrong answers; in altopalo’s musical-verse, anything is possible.

Less than a year after their debut album Frozenthere, New York enigmatic band altopalo are back with intricate and other-wordly new single “Mud”. What starts as a smooth and intimate synth-pop ballad quickly turns into an experimental playground where abrupt synths, modulated logorrhea and unpredictable twists collide. Challenging and ambitious, “Mud” also manages to retain a certain poetic delicacy and a pop immediacy, which is not always the case with this kind of exploration.

About the origins of the track, Silvergade explained:

[su_quote]We wrote this song after cleaning up a box full of maggots in the basement of the house we were living/recording at. It seemed like the box at one point had old documents from the ’80s. No longer. Just maggots and dirt, which in this case was composed of maggot excrement. Anyway the song is about tar pits of the mind.[/su_quote]

Then, altopalo‘s Mike Haldeman added:

[su_quote]Once in elementary school I told my therapist that there was “thunder in my brain.” mud is the goopy sticky mess that clings to ones feet when the “brain rain” is falling everywhere. as friends, the four of us altopaloans take special care in sharing much of our mud with one another.[/su_quote]

Altopalo is a Brooklyn-based indie foursome with prolific members: their singer Rahm Silverglade released some music in solo via Terrible Records and their guitarist Mike Haldeman played in Moses Sumney’s band. The two others members, Jesse Bielenberg and Dillon Treacy, have played with Kevin Garrett and Amber Mark respectively. After a series of singles sparsely released over the last months, they’ve just announced their debut album and shared a new track. “Mono” is a minimalist experimental song with surgical details. It’s actually facinating how the architecture of their collages let the sounds pop up with relief, like if there was a third dimension. So why did they name this “Mono”?

With “I Don’t Know”, Black Fly offers a solid debut taken from a project mixed by Beach House and Dirty Projectors‘ collaborator David Tolomei. The emo-goth song lets all the room to the emotions and is powerful as a shout in a majestuous landscape. Knowing that the artist comes from the wild side of Vermont, we don’t have any doubts about where his inspirations come from.

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