Sonic Summit

To Australian audiences – and indeed globally – Alpine Decline are a mystery band, having carved four immaculate albums seemingly out of the ether, slowly changing from the Doug Martsch-sounding self-titled album to the marred contemplation of Night Of The Long Knives and the haunted Visualisations. Jonathan Zeitlin says that the duo (Zeitlin on guitar/vox, Pauline Mu on drums) find their circumstances ultimately colour the direction and mood of each album.

“We try to think of the albums outside of the artist-evolution narrative and imagine them as episodes in a genre series or something – the way you can dive into the noir detective world in a Raymond Chandler novel without needing any story continuity,” Zeitlin explains. “Someone finding out about us, now or in 20 years, can then totally explore each record like a trip into some far flung destination within our universe. The albums (change) because our reality, like most people, is a constantly flickering, twitching thing, and we're trying to explore that rather than just execute a particular aesthetic that fits neatly into a genre we like or what the rest of the music world is up to.”

With that swirling amalgam of different influences making Alpine Decline somewhat difficult to define, Zeitlin maintains that definition isn't necessary when music should be experienced, preferably as loud as possible. “In a Venn diagram, hopefully we fall within songwriting and sonic chaos,” he laughs. “Trying to have new experiences and continue developing the narrative – that's how we feel we should be living our lives. We don't think our music should be some separate thing we're doing; the albums are artefacts and the means by which we hope to share these experiences and connect with people on a humanist level. Our new album Go Big Shadow City is to me the most maximum, expansive, panoramic album yet – both in sound and songwriting – and I feel its role in the series of records is to push the rocketship into supersonic, solar-shielding peeling off, into-the-white saturation. I hope at the end you pull off the headphones, pupils dilated, sweat beading on your upper lip, wondering where you are and what the fuck that was.”

Such a huge sound coming from two people is hard to fathom, yet Zeitlin insists nothing is compromised. “With just two of us on stage, the thrill is in connecting with each other and trying to build up this massive storm of sound. The risk of it collapsing and our natural tendencies to let it rip on guitar and drums makes the live sound a lot more aggressive and raucous.”