Alien Art – New album & Interview
Alien Art – New album & Interview
Alien Art is a new ultra psychedelic project from Ace Ventura and Captain Hook, who just released Alien Art’s debut album “Alpha Centauri” on Iboga Records. We hooked up with Yoni and Reshef to chat about the new album and their story behind it.
You can listen to the full album mix while you read!
Alien Art – Alpha Centauri (Full Album Mix)
When did you meet each other for the first time? Tell us about it.
It was around 2007, when the first Ace Ventura album came out, during the early days of Reshef’s first project Quantize, when the progressive sound was super hot in Israel and there were parties almost every day.
Why did you decide to create the Alien Art project?
We had collaborated a few times in the past, and the biggest tune we had was The Jolly Roger, which was an excellent reference to how both our styles meet in the best way. A few years ago we decided it was time to take it to the next level with a full concept album, and this is how Alien Art was born.
Get Alien Art – Alpha Centauri: https://iboga.fanlink.tv/vKrt
Tell us please about your recent trip to Alpha Centauri system, about the story of making the album.
While the Aliens theme is not new in Psytrance, it’s still such a vast subject, as space itself. Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to our own, and a potential home for humans in the far future – once we master the speed of light travel, that is, as it’s 41 Trillion Kilometres away from Earth… We started the creation process around Covid times. As it was challenging times, we journeyed into the world of Alien Art, slowly but surely searching our own sound, as we blended in the Psychedelic Trance styles we love and influenced by our in our own creation, which developed into a limitless adventure of music creation – blending so many different worlds into one.
How do you describe the Alien Art style? How is it different from your personal projects?
It’s hard to put into words, but in a nutshell it’s Futuristic extra terrestrial trance.
The difference from our projects is that the tracks are more patient and slow-building than Ace’s, but with more elements and information than Captain’s. We combine the older analog world with the futuristic digital one. It’s Psychedelic Trance with Goa and Progressive Trance elements, mostly aimed for the dance floor with a wide range of styles and BPM spanning from 140 to 148.
You can even find a Psybient Downtempo tune in the album.
Which is your favourite track from Alpha Centauri album and your favourite Psytrance track from all time?
Yoni : It’s hard to choose, but I’d say either THE MESSAGE which features a strong speech that is more relevant than ever nowadays, or THE GREYS which has a monstrous bassline that throws me to the 90s each time I play it.
As for a favourite track of all time, that’s a much more difficult question, so i’d name a few:
X-Dream – Psychomachine,
Juno reactor – Conga Fury,
FREq – Short Life Again.
Reshef: Well it depends, when you create an album, it becomes your baby and each track has a different quality, but it’s all part of the newborn. So choosing one is hard but what I can say is that I have a listening preference at different times for different tracks of the album. Regarding a favourite psy trance track of all time: it’s a tough and not really fair question to ask 🙂
I can name the top five albums: X Dream- We Created Our Own Happiness, X Dream – Radio, Hallucinogen – Twisted, Atmos – Headcleaner, Perfect Stranger – Free Cloud.
Tell us more about your creative process. What is your favourite gear to make alien sounds?
Yoni : Since we live in different countries, almost all of the production is done online. One of us starts a loop of a few minutes and we go Ping-Pong from there. It was actually a really smooth process and was fun to work on.
As for favourite gear I would say anything 303 related – meaning the Acid sounds that come either from a real Roland 303, its XoxBox emulation or the digital recreations from Audiorealism and the recent Arturia one.
Reshef: And on top of that we created track number seven together in my old studio in Tel Aviv and it was so much fun to actually create the DNA of this tune together. Regarding my favourite gear for making alien sounds, I’d say Korg MS 20, Korg Monopoly and Yamaha CS10.
Get Alien Art – Alpha Centauri on vinyl: https://www.diggersfactory.com/vinyl/318674/alien-art-alpha-centauri
Have you ever met aliens?
Yoni : Not yet but I witnessed two bright lights in the sky which moved like nothing possibly human, around 20 years ago. Then again, it was at a Psytrance party…
Reshef: Not since I got sober.
Future plans? For your own projects and for Alien Art.
Reshef: As we just released our debut AA album we’re planning to release two EPs in the upcoming months and to create more original music together, perhaps some collaborations as well. We might even create some Downtempo since the creation process of the album’s closing track – ‘Gaia’ – was so much fun and inspiring. Regarding the Captain Hook project: We’re in the midst of releasing ‘Ouroboros’, it’s a triple remix album of nine vinyls in total. After Ouroboros I’m gonna work on a collaboration album of ‘Captain Hook & Friends’. As well as work on a full live show.
Yoni: As for me, other than the recently announced ACID PUNKS collaboration with Outsiders, there’s a substantial project which I cannot discuss just yet, but I will soon 🙂
Read our interview with NOOR: https://trancentral.tv/2024/05/noor-new-album-from-ofer-dikovsky-oforia/