ATP All Tomorrow's Parties

REVIEWS:

“symphonic textures and miasmic chord changes that will grab your attention...a hybrid between ancient sounds and the psychedelic capacities of one man.” – Pitchfork

7/10, “everyone’s tripping out and no one really needs drugs anymore” - Vice

“It doesn’t sound quite like anything else I’ve heard this year, which is probably why I’ve been playing it so much.” – Mapsadaisical

“a steady grower...a meticulously disorienting, blissed environment...very pleasing” – Uncut

“his guitar work hints at everything from Led Zeppelin's most stately to My Bloody Valentine's most cryptic, no bad place to be.” – Plan B

Top 10 Record for June – XLR8R

“Portal displays the talent of Alexander Tucker in its exquisite beauty.” – Trust

8/10, “An extremely resonant album.” - Ox

“Tucker is on great form...it’s the marriage of compositional and production disciplines that sets him apart from his peers. Excellent stuff.” - Boomkat

ALBUM OF THE WEEK, “continues to grow on me to the point that I want to declare that the man is a total genius...such is the power of this mans sound...Marvelous, timeless stuff and very highly recommended.” – Norman Records

“Pushes his songwriting talent to the fore.” – De:bug

PRESS RELEASE:

On 9th June 2008 ATP Recordings released the third album from Alexander Tucker, Portal. The album is available on CD and LP, featuring artwork from Tucker (see above).

"Texts of this nature usually require the author to make fashionable or wilfully oblique references to artists past and present. Portal, the third Alexander Tucker long player for ATP Recordings is a work of such bewitching splendour that any such comparisons would read like hyperbole, thus doing it a great disservice. Even Tucker's Previous albums (Old Fog and Furrowed Brow) seem like stepping stones in the wake of Portal. But if we must draw comparisons then lets say Chicago musician/composer Jim O' Rourke both are unparalleled in their pairing of the 20th Century avant-garde techniques of composers like Stockhausen and Steve Reich with the archaic sounding free-folk of John Fahey, Robbie Basho and Loren Connors.

The late Karlheinz Stockhausen envisaged music where "instead of very precisely formed single notes there are little complexes little crystalline blooms that pass through a register form". During Portal, Tucker's finger-picked guitar lines become indistinguishable from the more traditional string arrangements and voice. These melodic clusters interweave like the paths incurved by a figure skater. This is still to say nothing of Tucker's voice, which sounds as if it is emanating from a ghost channel on an ancient mixing desk rather than appear sung on top of the epochal arrangements. It's a voice comparable perhaps to Meddle era David Gilmour or John Martyn on Solid Air. These are big claims of course but then Portal is a work of such extraordinary majesty that even trying to surmise it in words seems like a heresy. If you disagree after listening, then I'm sorry to inform you that you are spiritually dead."

- Tony F Wilson.

Tracklisting:

1. Poltergeists Grazing
2. Veins To The Sky
3. Omnibaron
4. Husks
5. Bell Jars
6. Energy For Dead Plants
7. Another World
8. Here