The Deli #56 - Altopalo, NAMM 2019, Queens takes over Brooklyn

Altopalo started off the way
many great NYC bands do:
as college friends. Mike
Haldeman, Jesse Bielenberg,
Dillon Treacy, and Rahm Silverglade
met while studying at NYU,
where they hung out in similar circles
and shared a love for tinkering with
sound. The four were thrown together
under some pretty serendipitous
circumstances for a school gig, and
officially came together as altopalo in
2013. Since then, they’ve been creating
songs that fuse electronica and
R&B, and sometimes dip into postrock
and psych musings. Their sophomore
release, frozenthere, came out
earlier this year on Samedi records.
The band’s debut album noneofuscared
came out in 2015—an impressive and
refreshing blend of funky electronica that
caught the attention of local scenesters
and music blogs. Silverglade’s expressive
vocals layered over knotted rhythms
and moody modulations (plus some serious
production chops) made for a captivating
record that stood out at a time
when the “indie rock sound” was starting
to feel stale. The record picked up where
Radiohead’s Kid A left off, offering an
experimental take on James Blake style
electro-R&B, with a few primal screams
thrown in for good measure.
Altopalo’s newest album frozenthere
pulses more than it grooves.
Where noneofuscared was eager to
burst open and invite you into its spacey
universe, frozenthere is assuredly
patient. It’s an avant-garde record that
unfurls slowly, revealing the band’s more
vulnerable introspections on relationships
in the digital age.
On the new project, altopalo
made the conscious decision to leave behind
their conventional full-band sensibility
in favor of something more challenging
and sparse. “We were listening to some
artists that played with orchestration in
inspiring ways and used that as a departure
from writing for four instruments.”
The process was a lot like taking
a slab of marble and sculpting away
until the desired shape is achieved, and
it wasn’t easy. Just as Brian Eno used the
recording studio as an instrument unto
itself on Another Green World, altopalo
views audio editing software Ableton as
a unique tool for their songs. There were
several cycles of improvising, scrapping
and going back to the drawing board—
or rather, sounding board. “It’s an arduous
process, you wish it were simpler.
We could release two albums-worth
of material comprised only of different
versions of ‘(Head in a) Cloche.’” Along
the way, altopalo realized that when it
comes to songwriting, more is not in
fact more. “Adding one good sound to
another good sound more often than not
makes them both worse.”
The LP was written and recorded
in the dead of winter of 2016 in
Indiana. Being away from the city helped
the musicians uncover a fresh perspective
on what it means to be isolated—
emotionally, physically, and digitally—
which would inform the album’s central
conceit. “Leaving New York to work, it
becomes quite clear what pressures ease
off as the city recedes behind you. The
overbearing presence of the city’s ‘noise’
in its many shapes and varieties fades
away quickly, and it doesn’t really become
clear until you can hear the ringing
in your ears just below the rustle of leaves
made by a nearby pack of coyotes.”
Whereas living in New York
can sometimes force stifling living spac-
es, recording in Indiana gave altopalo
some room to breathe, reflect and ultimately
take their songs into a new direction.
“We’ve all lived in pretty cramped
accommodations in the city, too, and
that minimizing of personal space brings
with it a proximity to others that can
grow at times uncomfortable in its unexpected
intimacy.”
Their songs ruminate on the
distortion of relationships, both physical
and digital. frozenthere meditates
on what it means to feel close, or far, or
stuck—whether it’s in the form of struggling
with monogamy or losing yourself
in the endless scroll of an instagram
feed. In this context, the notion of being
frozen takes on new meaning. It draws a
line from digital freeze—a buffering video,
a glitchy facetime call, the flattened
quality of an instagram profile—to a
more tactile sense of coldness.
Altopalo wouldn’t be the first
band to admit that they have a fraught
relationship with technology. By now,
we’ve all heard the arguments against
the alienating impacts of social media
and nobody needs another laundry list of
why it’s ultimately detrimental for our social
and mental wellbeing. But this skepticism
can be trickier to navigate when
your work depends on sharing, creating,
and connecting online.
After taking a step back, altopalo
were able to see—and express—
clearly the frustrating duality of urban
life: being constantly surrounded by others
but feeling increasingly isolated, and
in turn, “feeling alienated by the ways in
which we distract ourselves from the immediate
world by immersing ourselves in
a universe of screens and pixels.”
A universe, it turns out, that’s
as alienating as it is inspiring—at least as
far as music creation is concerned. d
Altopalo’s Favorite Stompboxes
“[We use the] Behringer US600 Ultra Shifter, whose “flutter” setting is paired with the EHX
Stereo Memory Man w/ Hazarai on some bass parts. Mike really likes delay and pitch shifting.
He’s got 5 delay pedals on his board, 2 of which have pitch-shifting capabilities, and
one standalone pitch shifter. The Line 6 DL-4 and the Montreal Assembly Count to Five
are often used in tandem with other delays to create floral rushes and verdant cascades.”
the deli Winter 2019 21