Perpetually and Forever, the new album by Alexander Noice, marks a bold evolution in the Los Angeles-based guitarist, composer, and producer’s already adventurous career. Known for his genre-defying work at the intersection of jazz, contemporary composition, electronic music, and art rock, he turns inward on this solo record, crafting an electro-acoustic sound world that balances precision with spontaneity. The album weaves glimmering synth textures, heavy 808-driven beats, processed pianos, pitch-shifted woodwinds, and inventive timbral manipulations into intricate layers that move between intimacy and expansiveness. At its core, the project reflects on the buoyant optimism of late-1950s and early 60s America through the fractured lens of our contemporary moment. What begins as a bright invocation of the “American Dream” gradually unravels into darker, more dissonant terrain, mirroring a world grappling with diminished agency and the suffocating weight of late-stage capitalism.
The album unfolds as a three-part journey through shifting sonic and emotional landscapes. It begins in light with “Love Makes the World Go Round,” whose vibrant grooves channel mid-century optimism, followed by “Third Corso,” which sustains that atmosphere of warmth and possibility, and “They Talk Things Over,” where luminous textures and nostalgic samples come into focus. For “Love Makes the World Go Round,” Noice incorporates samples from a decade-old bedroom improvisation session with saxophonist Gavin Templeton, transforming intimate archival material into exuberant, joyful textures. As the record progresses, brightness gives way to fracture: “Albert in Loghaven” and “Sinking Santa Maria” layer dissonant 808s with pitch-shifted, freely improvised performances by Joe Santa Maria on saxophone, flute, and bass clarinet, shaping them into angular, beat-driven forms, while “Cinerama Holy Days” pushes further, with rhythmically hocketed pianos and chopped lines splintering the surface into jagged, unsettled patterns.
The record ultimately resolves with “Body Is Reality,” a stark and meditative piano piece that strips the sonic palette to its essence. After dense collisions of optimism and fracture, the closing track offers fragile clarity—sparse, contemplative, and deeply human. By its conclusion, Perpetually and Forever arrives at a delicate equilibrium, acknowledging the weight of realism while sustaining a small but persistent flame of hope. In this way, the album functions as both soundscape and allegory, capturing the collision of past promises and present truths, nostalgia and disillusionment, despair and perseverance. Even as Noice pushes electro-acoustic composition into forward-thinking territory, his music remains inviting: melodies are clear, grooves infectious, and the emotional arc unmistakable.
Visionary Creative Music