Alaska In Winter Are On Holiday

Alaska In Winter began when art student, Brandon Bethancourt spent a semester writing and recording music in an isolated cabin on the south coast of you guessed it Alaska. Two years later, a debut album behind him, and with Zach Condon of Beirut, Heather Trost of A Hawk and a Hacksaw and other friends at his side, Brandon recorded his sophomore effort, Holiday.

Alaska In Winter, is far from being a gypsy folk record and Holidayis nothing like his friends other bands or albums. In fact, AIW are so far away from being that, it's hard to convince yourself that members of Beirut and A Hawk and A Hacksaw are in the band. You see, Holidayand Alaska In Winter are both totally geared to the darker spaces of the dancefloor.

With auto-tune and vocoders on over drive and with 80's-like synths bubbling up everywhere, Alaska In Winter create darkly deceiving dance edicts that are mind numbingly good. While I figured the auto-tune/vocoder thing would get annoying after about the third or fourth song, it never actually got to that point. That's because Holidayis so good at weaving the robotic vocal interplay around the futuristic beats that make up a majority of the record, it sounds as if it were created by a raving, pill munching group of replicants from Blade Runner.

Alaska In Winter may have it's origins in folk but having listened to Holiday there's nothing rustic or quiet about it. Holidayis a fantastic futuristic album loaded with downtempo gloominess and danceable synth pop gems, wrapped in a lush package of electronics. The future has arrived and apparently it's waiting for us in Alaska. Road Trip anyone?