Words of a Kōan Scholar

In what I consider an interesting twist, Alpha Drone has produced a song that sounds at once refined and danceable. For a project whose music previously made my family members ask if I had left appliances on in the house, that's quite a leap. Of course, the more accessible music is still bound up in metaphysical weirdness, since a kōan seems to be the Zen Buddhist equivalent of a Socratic dialogue. With AD, vocals have not always come across terribly clearly, which continues to be the case on 'Words of a Kōan Scholar', just occupying a deep-voiced pocket in the recording that more or less fits the profile of a bass. The words are strongly distorted and echoed, revealing at the beginning and end of the song a skitterish distortion of movement difficult to describe.

You will of course be wondering how 'Words of a Kōan Scholar' proves danceable, and that's in the manner that the hooky piano line foregrounds itself very clearly before the vocals come in, propping itself up with regular electronic beats to propel the composition through 5 minutes with ease. I can kind of imagine that you'd hear this playing in an underground goth club in the small hours, since it has features of a Skinny Puppy song or a Nine Inch Nails remix with only the melody line remaining. The piano hook varies after about 2 minutes, yet the feel of the piece remains consistent from start to finish, explaining its relative brevity in the AD catalogue. I'd hate to call it a new direction, since the project is largely experimental, but 'Words of a Kōan Scholar' certainly reveals a new side to Alpha Drone.