我們應該為Jonathan和他的妻子Pauline
頒發音樂勞模獎章，
他們是我見過最勤奮的音樂家。
音樂家夫婦我認識幾對，但是如Janathan和Pauline這般的音樂夫妻檔真的少見，他們從美國洛杉磯移居到北京之後，除去在大學教書以及照顧他們才兩三歲的寶寶之外就是在他們自己的音樂王國裡工作耕耘。
這對夫妻同時在做幾個不同的音樂項目，其中最重要的兩個：一是迷幻搖滾的Alpine Decline；二是以Eurorack為主要武器的實驗聲音項目Alpine Decline Duo。
沒有看過Alpine Decline現場，而僅僅從網絡上稀疏的文字介紹中知道他們的人很容易以為他們的音樂是那種shoegazing式的自賞派流行樂，而看過他們現場的人會一邊捂著被他們的音樂轟到耳鳴的耳朵一邊豎起大拇指。
很難描述清楚Alpine Decline的現場，它充滿了高能量，盤旋不覺的迷幻聲音從不會衰減。他們用了很多模擬延時效果，製造出了不同於舊金山老式迷幻或者英式自賞派的獨特之聲，雖然只有鼓和吉他兩個樂器，但是他們製造出了千軍萬馬奔騰在天空的場景。
而Alpine Decline Duo則是他們夫妻的一個模塊合成器項目，這次他們二人更純粹的回歸到聲音本身，用更原始而又充滿智慧挑戰的方式來製造他們自己的迷幻之聲。
附：TimeOut雜誌專訪Alpine Decline
——關於新專輯、楊海崧，和北京糟糕的墨西哥卷餅
Three years on from abandoning their place in LA’s rock scene to start over in Beijing, husband and wife psych-rock duo Alpine Decline unveil their new LP GO BIG SHADOW CITY with a special Genjing Records showcase in Shanghai this month as part of JUE Festival. TimeOut talk to guitarist Jonathan Zeitlin about the new record, working with Yang Haisong and bad Beijing burritos.
The blurb accompanying GO BIG SHADOW CITY says that it’s your 『most coherent and unique album, with everything heightened』 and that the sound is 『rawer』. Do you agree with this assessment and if so, what do you think gives the record these qualities?
Yeah I definitely agree on this album everything is heightened. While we were writing and spinning out this record it was clear that this thing had real identity, and at each stage it was becoming tangible without a lot of attrition. I don't think the ideas or music or concepts were weaker on the previous albums, but I think the realization was more accurate, more charmed on GO BIG SHADOW CITY. Talking strictly about the sound, we always want the atmosphere of the record to fill out around the raw drums and guitar sound we have live in a room - I guess we're more machine in the ghost rather than ghost in the machine.
Was the 『heightened』 instrumentation and 『raw』 feel something that you were aiming for when you first started writing this album?
We start the writing process by building up a vocabulary and images that we can overlay on top of our real world experiences and our environment, and as it gets fleshed out our real world recedes and the world of the album sorta becomes visual everywhere. On the last record we were exploring confusion and chaos - y'know, on a personal level but also exterior - so at it's best moments Night of the Long Knives feels very unstable. But GO BIG SHADOW CITY is grappling with the other end of the spectrum, and so at it's best moments it feels heightened and overwhelmed in the way you might feel watching a Boeing Dreamliner balancing on its nose on top of an ant.
This record, as with much of your music since you moved to China, seems very much borne out of your experiences in Beijing. Do you think you would have made this kind of album if you were still in LA? Would your sound be significantly different if you were still there?
There's no way this record or Night of the Long Knives could have been made in Los Angeles or in our lives then, because even at our most conceptual or abstract we're still just trying to make some human expression of our experience, which at the moment are rooted in China. But we've been conscious from the beginning of Alpine Decline that we didn't want the music to sound like it was coming from anywhere specific - but more like something or someone might find buried in the distant future lost from some other time and place. As a result our first three albums don't sound at all like Los Angeles and I think that if you pick out any of our albums they should be instantly recognizable as us, whether it was pre-or-post into Beijing.
What do you feel working with Yang Haisong brings to your records?
Well we're able to spend a lot of time with Yang Haisong in a small, unventilated underground vault without any violence. Yang Haisong is a really compassionate guy who understands where we're coming from and has a brilliant feel for music. When we are recording an album, the producer becomes part of the band, and Yang Haisong fits really well with our temperament. He's got a great willingness to experiment and lets us feel free to go with our process, even though it's a little unconventional.
Tapes play a significant part in your sound. What is it about that aesthetic that you find so alluring?
Tape machines yes. Because you print the sound onto a piece of tape that's whipping around a machine and it exists with all the defects of real time and machinery and it wow and flutters and then is erased, but on a dirty machine maybe not erased completely, so there are ghostly traces murmuring and decaying underneath everything. It helps us expand beyond ourselves without triggering perfect predictable samples, and it appeals to a romantic sense of being lost to history or time or whatever.
You’re quite a prolific band in terms of releases. Are you constantly writing and recording? How does that process generally work?
Yes we usually start writing the next album as soon as the last one goes off to the pressing plant. There are some oddball artists that really work at the whim of their muse, and there are "band" bands that spend a lot of time tightening up their jams. But I come from more of a writer background, so writing is the ritual that my life is built around and actually getting in a room and letting fly on our instruments is a complimentary part of that.
How long do you see yourselves being based in Beijing for? Do you get moments where you want to head back to LA?
We're in Beijing indefinitely. We're not anywhere forever, and we have pangs of LA-nostalgia regularly, but we're not operating with a contingency plan. If there were better burritos in Beijing, it might help those waves of heartache. But since moving to China we've been touring plenty overseas (Europe, Korea, Japan, Australia, and yes the US) and so actually, it's such a good feeling to sorta retreat from that back to our tiny corner out on the edge of Beijing.
（文字轉自：TimeOut Shanghai）
AlpineDecline模塊合成器演出
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楊海崧&謝玉崗
時間 / 12月12日 19:30
地點 / 回聲圖書館
問訊 / 0411-84716090
門票 / 60｜40（預售）
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