Alias & Tarsier
Brookland/Oaklyn

For once, I'll try to be brief and concise (so forgive the use of too many "labels").

Brendon Whitney (Alias) is a producer/dj/musician with roots in the Hip-Hop culture. He arrives from Portland (the one in Maine) to San Francisco in 1997, and here, with 7 other figures orbiting the independent electronic universe of the West Coast, he founded Anticon.: a label that has been described several times as "the Post-Rock equivalent in Hip-Hop" or, with an intriguing neologism, "AvantHop".

Rona Rapadas (Tarsier) is a guitarist/pianist/singer with Folk-New Age and (acoustically) Pop(like) influences. One day, in 2003, she found herself listening to "Muted," an instrumental LP by Alias, and fell in love with it so much that she contacted him (via email: she was in New York due to her project Healamonster & Tarsier) and proposed a vocal re-edition of it. I'll spare you all the intermediate steps (which you can still read here); just know that the collaboration ultimately produced another completely "autonomous" album: the one I'm about to tell you about (whose title derives from the contraction of the names of the two locations where our artists communicated to make it. Brooklyn and Oakland).

The first thing that comes to mind when listening to "Brookland/Oaklyn" is to thank all the musical ferment that arose around Bristol (UK) at the dawn of the (wonderful?) '90s. Yes, I'm talking about Trip-Hop. Thank you because, whatever one may say, it still influences many artists many years later on both sides of the Atlantic, and what matters more is that it does so in a conceptually positive way and not supinely derivative (and sorry for the overuse of adverbs).

Staying in the topic, in fact, this record (released in 2006), far from being a clone of Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, etc., presents very personal characteristics derived from the experiences, artistic and of life, of the two co-authors: if on the one hand her "decided" New Age soul (and her voice) gives that adorable Dream Pop aura, on the other hand, his electronic Hip-Hop experiences (especially in the rhythm section: in the bass-drums lines) act as a counterbalance: the result is a pleasant "pastiche" dense with contaminations. The "classicism" that comes from the (not rare) use of the piano and/or the folk reminiscences of the acoustic guitars are skillfully embedded in Club Music rhythms and loops without going "over the top", ever, and remaining in a sweet and dreamy mood (try listening to it here): a true melodic caress after the "industrial" rhythms of our days.

An optimistic vision of the pains of Trip-Hop. It's all about understanding if, for those who listen, it comes too late.

Mo.