We Went There: Alona-a Release Show at The Cedar
I’ve seen Alone-a many times over the years, but it’s usually in an art space or a backyard show, so it was cool to see Alana Horton’s project get the full Cedar treatment for the release show of her excellent a veil, a prism record.
While her musical tools were similar to her usual setup, a table of synths and gadgets, tied together by a laptop, she had the full force of the Cedar’s sound system and a cavalcade of beautiful visuals to help enrich her rich ambient soundscapes. As she said at the start of her set, she broke from her usual tradition of improvising live to mix in fragments of songs from her new album around celestial improvs.
As always her music was a mixture of beauty and dissonance, both in the crackling synths but also her angelic-yet-chopped vocals that were soaked in effects. The room was mostly dark, helping to enrich the screens behind her, and the crowd was focused in on this celebratory night. At times the music was electro-acoustic, almost pop leaning, while other suites were chilly ambient. Other times sounded like a church organ drone trying to shake lose some ghosts. It was a powerful set that both captured the sound she has been crafting for years, but showcased the structure and growth shown on her latest LP.
While her set was the reason for the evening, she also included two great openers in her night that really helped warm up the room. First up was Kenan Serenbetz, who mostly played banjo and was backed by a four piece crew where two of the crew rotated between things like a second banjo, a pump organ and a concert zither while the other two rounded out the celestial, twee-pop songs. His sound reminded me of the early, folk-y side of Sufjan Stevens if he wrote mostly about flora and fauna instead of states. It was a set of incredibly earnest alt-folk that the band were able to pull off well.
Directly before the headlining set was composter Zack Baltich, who played marimba, pre-programmed beats and a small standing drum kit. It was a heady, psychedelic mix where the sum was greater than the parts, with glitchy synths blending with warm marimba flourishes. At times he blended in things like soulful vocal samples or sounds of ice stacks from Lake Superior in his native Duluth, sounds that help craft music that ranged from nearly free-jazzy to ambient to lo-fi hip hop beats. It was quite the adventure and Baltich showed the dexterity to make what could be a total car crash into what I would describe as orchestral.
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