Realizing a Year of Abandon
Abandon is a knee-jerk emotional reaction catalogued in the muscles of our bodies, which remember the physical definition of the word from various moments in our personal histories; sometimes it is the wild impulsiveness of youth and other times it is the renunciation that causes people, places, or things to be left behind.
On May 15th, 2015, I independently released my third full-length album centered around these themes of abandon with grant funding from the New York State Council on the Arts.
“Year of Abandon” lapses vocally between exhilarated trills and the not-so-hidden mourning of thrills sought and found and lost. All the while lush electronic soundscapes pulse and shift, sometimes too dense to comprehend but occasionally finding simplicity. Featured on the 9 original tracks are the vast contents of my ever-expanding toy hoard: various toy pianos, desk bells, typatune, chimes, glockenspiel, pianosaurus, roly poly musical chime bear, toy cash register, toy banjo, little tikes xylo keyboard, vintage ice cube tray, African bottle cap shaker, and rainstick.
Some thoughts on the album by conscientious rapper and former tour mate Bruce “Allone” Pandolfo:
As the title suggests and the songs ring out, it seems to be a project concerned with letting go, with healing wounds or moving on in spite of them, with focusing on the flight of the nestling, with the motion of the sea, with looking out into the expanse of space, walking away from the war, liberating ourselves from bleak pasts, knowing our worth and our ability to build new and endeavoring to do so. It feels like a goodbye in a hopeful sense as we stubbornly intend on a brighter future because we deserve it. Damn right.
It’s fantastically original and has great imagination that is expertly executed. Some people may be intimidated or befuddled by her sometimes haunting moods or esoteric vocals and experimental approaches but this is the kind of dense yet bare music that you feel first, and settle into and keep discovering new things to love and learn about it and from it. What feels depressing in one moment sometimes turns to shockingly bright and catchy vocal runs that you are forever stuck trying to sing. If you can, catch her live somewhere around the country and definitely support Alexa Dexa because she is 100% authentic and if you give her a chance, she will never fail to give you all of her intellectual and emotional faculties in a song or album.
Read the full review here.
