speed of dark

I have been admirer of Alaska In Winter's stately, orchestral compositions since I first heard them last year (Electronic Anthems from Alaska In Winter), and it has been my pleasure to watch others discover their beauty and to see the album I first received as a home-copied CD finally released to the world at large. I am excited beyond words that I'll be seeing AIW perform this Thursday with Beirut at the Avalon in Hollywood.

I asked Brendan Bethancourt, the creative heart and soul of Alaska In Winter, to do an interview with me, and here is the resulting conversation.

SOD: Who is the pretty lady on the cover of your CD? I've been wondering about her!

BB: That’s a girl I love very much- she’s the one who cried paper tears for me every night while I was away in Eastern Europe searching for the perfect dance party.

SOD: The story about your winter in a cabin in Alaska has made the rounds. How did that happen? You were pretty young to go so far off alone and under such austere circumstances.

BB: It was my sister who inspired me to go to Alaska. I had dropped out of college during a rough point in my life and basically ran off to Alaska to get away from everything.

SOD: Did you go there with the objective of making an album? What condition were these songs in when you returned, and what was the process of bringing them up to their current state?

BB: No. Actually I went there specifically with the intention of not making any music. I went there to take a break from everything in my life at that moment including music. Near the end I got restless and ended up getting hold of a keyboard and an acoustic guitar from somebody and just started recording music in the cabin for like 12-14 hours a day with this free downloaded audio software called Audacity and a broken laptop. It was cabin fever. The songs were all really rough when I got back; they were basically the skeletons of the songs they would become. Actually, those songs I initially made in Alaska are all on the first AIW album that isn’t even released (not the current Dance Party in the Balkans), but those also all had parts added to them by Zach Condon and Heather Trost and other Albuquerque musicians through months of recording. The new album, Dance Party in the Balkans (which also happens to be the “debut”) happened over a year or so after the first one.

SOD: The winter in the cabin in Alaska was the Winter of 2004, and obviously a lot has happened for you since then. For example, when we e-mailed earlier this year, you told me you just wanted to finish school. You must have done that by now?

BB: Ha ha, yes… I did end up graduating from college finally… it only took me 7 years to get an art degree ha hah, and yes, a lot has happened since then such as getting signed to Regular Beat in Liverpool which was exciting, the first ‘real’ AIW CD came out this summer, and I’m on tour with my friends Beirut, right now as we do this very interview!

SOD: One of your reviewers wrote that he thought you were jumping on Beirut's bandwagon by having Zach perform on your album and by calling it "Dance Party in the Balkans." What is your history and connection with Zach Condon?

BB: I’ve known Zach for years. I was friends with him and his older brother when I was in high school in Santa Fe, and we’ve been recording music since before Zach hit puberty. Zach has always played on all of my albums, since he was 16 years old or so (which if you didn’t know is a lot of albums, and under different names and such). [Ed.: One of Bethancourt's earlier collaborations with Condon and Trost is 2004's Opion Somnium.]

SOD: How much and when did Zach contribute to the making of this album?

BB: Oh, it happened in a couple of sessions, I think 2 or 3 sessions with a couple months in between… early 2006 I think? It usually works like this: I have a bunch of songs pretty much ready to have trumpet or whatever else layered in, I invite Zach and his trumpet over for some beers, we end up getting drunk, and I point a mic at him and then, abracadabra! we’ve got a song with Zach on it.

SOD: How did you come to give the album this name? It isn't much like dance music!

BB: That’s true, but at least I dance to it when I’m alone and think of Slovenia. I called it that simply because I recorded the bulk of that album the day after I got back from a five-week long dance party in Eastern Europe, so it seemed appropriate. Perhaps my next album will have something to do with wagons?

Scheduled Shows:
Oct 8 2007 - w/ Beirut @ Herbst Theater, San Francisco, CA
Oct 9 2007 - w/ Beirut @ Herbst Theater, San Francisco, CA
Oct 10 2007 - w/ Beirut @ Avalon, Los Angeles, CA
Oct 11 2007 - w/ Beirut @ Avalon, Los Angeles, CA
Nov 14 2007 - w/ The Octopus Project/A Hawk and a Hacksaw @ Launchpad!, Albuquerque, NM

Alaska In Winter: Dance Party In the Balkans from Dance Party In the Balkans (2007)

MySpace | Website | Label: Regular Beat Records
Buy at Regular Beat Store, HMV, Rough Trade, and Amazon-U.K.