Tag / CD

In the media: Alka’s brand new album Regarding The Auguries…

We are thrilled that Alka’s brand new album Regarding The Auguries has been picking up reviews and media attention.

There are reviews worth checking out on THE ELECTRICITY CLUB website (“For those who like darker electronic textures from outside of the pop spectrum with contemplative aural concepts that capture the zeitgeist of uncertainty”) and in the new edition of ELECTRONIC SOUND magazine.

Alka’s Bryan Michael, Erika Tele and Todd Steponick have also talked about some of their influences through picking five of their favourite albums on the FURTHER. online blog.

You can also read an interview with Alka founder Bryan Michael on the SIDE-LINE website.

More soon…


Regarding The Auguries: the brand new album from Alka

VeryRecords is pleased to announce the release of Regarding The Auguries, the latest album from Alka which will be released on 9th October 2020.



‘Regarding The Auguries’ is the portentously-titled fourth album from Philadelphia electronic unit Alka. It is an album that reflects back our myriad concerns about the world; a teeming, restless work surveying global civil unrest, freak earthly phenomena and a sense that order is slowly being dismantled around us. Although it was recorded long before lockdown, its grim outlook makes it a fitting release during the grip of an existential crisis that has impacted us all.

After being a solo project of Bryan Michael since the early 2000s, for ‘Regarding The Auguries’ Alka is re-imagined as a unit of Bryan Michael, visual artist Erika Tele and fellow Philadelphia electronic musician Todd Steponick, a line-up familiar from their recent, pre-lockdown shows.

The eleven tracks on the album were written in what Bryan describes as “slow motion” – he would start an idea; Todd would respond to it; Erika would add her distinctive vocals, which would then be woven through the track like another instrument. A track might then be disassembled, deconstructed and rebuilt, or its atomised components could end up as the basis for another track completely. What emerged from this evolving, morphing, shapeshifting sonic conversation is a body of work that could not have existed without the interplay between the unit’s three members.

From the outset, Alka wanted to make this an album encompassing human reactions to the times we live in. Fear, dread and unknowable mysteries might dominate its sonic architecture, but here we also find personal emotion and vulnerability on the tender ‘My Heart’, led by a delicate, emotive vocal from Erika, or a sense of being dismayed by an inability to decipher the fact from fiction on ‘Doubt’.

Here we also can identify with the feeling of life’s certainties unravelling around us on the album’s gradually-evolving opener ‘Fractured Time’. The bold, robust ‘Faito’ deploys a Japanese word used to inspire confidence and encouragement, while ‘Scrapple’ finds Erika’s vocal positioned with shouty insistence on a spiky electro track inspired by the gilets jaunes riots in Paris.

Throughout the album, we hear melodies that glitch and splinter into strange, unpredictable shapes. We hear sharp edits and off-kilter time signatures, horror movie samples and brief gospel interjections; on the widescreen ‘Earth Crisis’ we hear a chilling sample of unexplained natural atmospherics that sound like the earth foretelling of its impending final moments.

“An augury is like fortune telling that comes from looking at the patterns of bird flight,” explains Bryan of the album’s title. “Those patterns usually prophecy some sort of doom. I’d come up with the title a long time ago, but when we were working on the album, it seemed to become more and more connected to the world around us. In the end, it feels like it’s become a very timely album.”

More timely it could not be. ‘Regarding The Auguries’ is a dark, contemplative electronic album made by three human beings staring fixedly at our suddenly uncertain futures.

MORE INFORMATION & PRE-ORDERS 


ALKA – Regarding The Auguries

Following 2017’s The Colour of Terrible Crystal, Alka’s new album, Regarding The Auguries, is VeryRecords’ sixth album release.

Regarding The Auguries is out now on limited-edition CD and via Digital Download.

TRACKLISTING
• Fractured Time
• Widthchild
• Faito
• Earth Crisis
• Scrapple
• Sourcery
• My Heart
• Solfège
• Doubt
• Dead Like Me
• King Card
• Solfège (Fujiya & Miyagi Remix)
• Faito (Vince Clarke Remix)
• Fractured Time (DJ Jekyll Remix)

The Regarding The Auguries album is available as a limited-edition CD or as a high quality FLAC download from the online shop, and as an MP3 download from iTunes and all good online retailers.


BROOK – Built You For Thought

Built You For Thought is the debut album from Brook. It was released on CD and via Digital Download on September 20th 2019.

TRACKLISTING
• Ewes
• Prince
• Damage
• Everglades
• Trying To Forget You
• Built You For Thought
• Diamond Days
• Rage
• Wasn’t Meant To Be
• Applaud
• Prince (Remixed by BT)
• BYFT (Remixed By Ben Chetwood, The Ancient Moons)
• Diamond Days (Remixed By Paul Humphreys)

ORDER
The Digital Download format is available to order now as an MP3 from iTunes and all good online retailers. The album is also available as a high quality download from the online shop.

The limited-edition CD format is available in the online shop while stocks last.