The ALPS are Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Alexis Georgopoulos and Scott Hewicker, a loose-knit collective of artists/musicians/writers very active in San Francisco's vital underground scene. The group specialize in spontaneous compositions of the out-limits variety, offering a SOUND that is ancient and new, intimate and enormous, ecstatic and expansive, and illuminated with white light.

The group are currently working on a follow-up record with engineer/producer Philip Manley (The Fucking Champs, Trans Am, Oneida). In the coming months, the group will release a 12" on visual artist Chris Johanson's new imprint AwesomeVistas. The group will also contribute a song to Devendra Banhart's forthcoming tribute compilation devoted to the works of the Clive Palmer.

The Alps: Jewelt Galaxies/Spirit Shambles CD
Spekk 2007

 

The Alps: Jewelt Galaxies CD-R
Root Strata 2005

From Foxy Digitalis:
"Jewelt Galaxies manages to turn the aural aspects of space travel into something wholly organic. That's not an easy task. Yet, this trio combine so many conflicting elements and do so with such skill that everything fits perfectly and flows naturally. Take the last track on this three track CD-R, "Tintinnabulations." Sparse, heavily-treated electric guitar adds the spacious elements of the black stellar vacuum. It's disjointed enough that you can never quite get a firm grasp on it. The use of bells and other chromatics are what add the earth-element to the proceedings. It's an excellent contrast, but the varying sounds work together wonderfully."

From Aquarius Records:
From the looks of the felt pen scrawled disc artwork you might be expecting some Wolf Eyes, Black Dice or Lightning Bolt sweaty dirge-noise bursts, but The Alps go in the opposite direction, offering up glistening meditative soundscapes well-suited to gazing at frosty mountain peaks such as those of their namesake. Makes more sense when you discover that The Alps are Scott Hewicker (Troll), Alexis Georgopoulos (Tussle) and Jefre Cantu (Tarentel, Colophon, J.C. Ledesma), doesn't it?
Squeaky clarinets and alien flute toots melted into whirls of swish and whoosh, all laid over ominous drones and instrument hum and tape hiss. Quite beautiful.

From FAKEJAZZ.COM
Jefre Cantu Ledesma of Tarentel has a new label, Root Strata. Perhaps the most anticipated release on the label is Home Ruckus, the first in a series of 12"s documenting home and live Tarentel recording sessions, however, the first three releases are CDRs of various Tarentel side projects. The Alps combines Ledesma with Alexis Georgopoulos of Tussle and Scott Hewick of a little known San Francisco band Troll, and Jewelt Galaxies is a 40 minute ride on a gypsy caravan as rumbling, rattling percussion creates a thick dust cloud around soft folk guitar trances and odd woodwind and electronic incantations. The four and a half minute first track sets the stage, filling the room with pipe smoke from a thick, wobbling wall of keyboard and pensive beats on a kettledrum as shakers and bells dance around. The 18 minute second track clears the clatter to leave space for a guitar raga, droning on for five solid minutes before adding a few improvised, playful mutations as the song builds up to its shamanistic, ritualistic second half. During this half of the song, clarinets skronk trilling micromelodies, guitars blare streams of feedback up towards the heavens, and cymbols crash to beckon the spirits closer. While this song gets heavy, the 16 minute third track is a tiny, quiet drone, celebrating the tingling of senses that quiet brings after a nice, good bit of loudness. Against a backdrop of soft, choppy electric guitar and persistent bell twinkling and shaker shaking, a keyboard squiggles a few droning phrases, quieting the mind and awakening the senses. Recommended for fans of free rock communes like No Neck Blues Band.

 

The Alps: Spirit Shambles CD-R
Foxy Digitalis 2005
red faced from sailing the tree waves of big sur, the alps crumble and fold like a cheap tent lost in the wilderness. this project, featuring members of tarentel and tussle, travels through the furthest reaches of our galaxy on the back of a hollowed-out redwood trunk. the music is spacious and seething with microscopic life. notes disappear before you can suck them in, each percussive blast chasing away the raining guitar tones. the alps exist in another dimension, setting up camp in the foothills and using little more than their music and their will to move mountains and bury themselves deep in the falling facade.

From Aquarius Records:
SF's The Alps (featuring our very own Scott Hewicker) returns with their second full length of haunting folky foresty freeform loveliness. Featuring members of Tarentel and Tussle, the Alps traffic in dark dreamy wonder, disembodied strains of some lost Appalachia float weightless in a dusky forest of murky mumbly ambience, while muted guitars and stumbling tribal drumming swirl and sway amidst delicate tendrils of creepy ghostly falsetto croon and swoon. Elsewhere, deep pools of shimmering cymbal wash sparkle and glimmer, the sky above a moonlit smear of ethereal electronic effevescence, all run through with streaks of subtle melody. Think The Wickerman meets Jewelled Antler or Neu! played at 16rpm broadcast through a moss covered speaker on the bottom of the sea, or the sound of the Northern Lights, recorded onto a wax cylinder and played back through a shortwave radio, while a boy on a nearby rooftop hurls broken cymbals into the drained swimming pool next door, the entire thing subtly underpinned by the relentless throb and pulse of rain dripping on upended plastic garbage cans. The final track however veers into much stranger territory, but somehow still sounds very Alps. An ultra lo-fi, pagan freakout, creepy and muddy and druggy, blown out drumming, bizarre animalistic vocalisations, all seemingly captured on a hand held microcassette recorder. Weird. But very cool.