Alta Mira

Clifton Park’s Alta Mira have been gracing the region’s clubs since late last year with a sound that fuses anthemic pop-rock to ornate, expansive arrangements, a la XTC, ‘90s Radiohead, or some of Tool’s early stuff. They’re handy with a time signature shift, they can rock a waltz with the best of ‘em, and singer Joe Michon-Huneau has a serious set of pipes. Watch for their debut EP next month” - Metroland (Best of 2007)

(Indian Ledge Records, 2009)

We first heard Alta Mira three years ago, when they were sharing the stage with the haunting Lisa Germano at Valentine’s Music Hall. We immediately became fans.

A year later, the young quartet released their debut disc on Indian Ledge Records. The EP “Fables and Fabrications” caught a lot of ears and garnered the band lots of great press.

Now they’re finally unleashing their first full-length album. It’s about time. And it’s worth the wait.

Alta Mira’s sound is difficult to pin down. It’s certainly not any kind of straight-forward rock formula. It’s complex, intoxicating. This is challenging stuff.

Joe Michon-Huneau’s passionate, open-hearted vocals immediately leap to front-and-center, while drummer Tommy Krebs and brothers Hunter and August Sagehorn (on bass and guitar, respectively) mold the songs with intricate, imaginative arrangements like seasoned sonic sculptors. Tempos and moods shift 180-degrees in a heartbeat. And back again. Is it art-rock anchored in funk? It shimmers as much as it shakes. It’s delicate, yet dynamic. It’s purposefully disorienting. There’s genuine drama here.

Take, for example, “The End of My,” which sounds something like Jeff Buckley singing an incredibly contagious Marshall Crenshaw song backed by the Police’s Andy Summer. And that’s followed by the compelling, yet understated instrumental “Interlude.”

The band’s sound has drawn comparisons to such diverse influences as Radiohead, Incubus, the Beatles, Talking Heads, Verve Pipe, XTC, Jerry Cantrell, the Mars Volta, Tool, the Sea and Cake. They’re all right. And all wrong. Alta Mira’s music unfolds at its own pace to reveal its altogether unique inner beauty.

written by Greg Haymes 12.4.09
- www.Nippertown.com

Alta Mira

It’s been two long years since Metroland named Alta Mira the region’s Best New Band, and so there’d been some speculation that the category might carry a curse similar to that of being featured on the cover. [Ed.—We have determined the curse to be a myth.] As it turns out, the quartet had simply been cloistered away at Barefoot Studios in Massachusetts honing material for this, their full-length debut, the inaugural record for Albany upstart label Indian Ledge Records.

Thankfully, all that attention to detail has paid off, as Alta Mira is a powerfully mature offering that doesn’t shy away from either art-rock grandeur or radio viability. Vocalist Joe D. Michon-Huneau doesn’t hesitate to display all that his sterling pipes can do, with a post-emo penchant for musical theatrics that ranges from Jeff Buckley confessional to Cedric Bixler-Zavala virtuosic. But as much as Michon-Huneau dominates the disc, brothers Hunter and August Sagehorn (guitar and bass, respectively) shape it. Standout tracks like “Sinker/Or,” with its Sea and Cake lilt, and “Slumberjack,” built on a bed of fuzz bass, prove that the band are hiding some serious chops behind their economic songcraft. Like a post-Radiohead Andy Summers, Hunter prefers to play delicate time-signature games with his brother and drummer Tommy Krebs rather than take a solo, and “Harder They Fall” succumbs to outward because-we-can prog-rock. Dig the hazy “Interlude” for what the instrumental trio can do by their lonesome.

Graced with the kind of masterly production that used to be reserved for major-label acts, this is a serious disc from a band with serious aspirations. More than shake a curse, this one should set Alta Mira up for loftier superlatives.

—Josh Potter
- Metroland

Alta Mira set to release new album


Long recording saga took place in studio with “creepy” history

Recording a debut album has been a bit of an adventure for Albany-based rock quartet Alta Mira. The group's self-titled effort on local indie label Indian Ledge has been in the works for approximately two years, and follows 2007's “Fables and Fabrications” EP. While total recording time only added up
to about two weeks, the group's members commuted to Barefoot Studios in Brighton, Mass., near Boston, whenever they had time, eventually amassing the album’s 12 songs.

And the studio itself, a former insane asylum with roughly 500 band practice rooms now housed within, provided its own challenges. In fact, the “creepy” atmosphere in the building helped lend a hand in
creating the album's dark moods.

HAUNTING QUALITY
“I've been told that it has sort of a haunting quality to it, and I can definitely see that on a couple of tunes,” said vocalist Joe D. Michon-Huneau from a coffee shop in Albany. “I don't think it was ever
really intention, but being in that atmosphere, it was pretty interesting.”

“We used to walk out of the studio in the hallways, and there were 30 bands playing in different rooms,” added bassist August Sagehorn. “It was like walking through the gates of Hell.”

The resulting album blends influences ranging from Radiohead to The Beatles to Tool, switching from pensive verses to full-throttle walls of distortion at the drop of a hat. It will be released at Revolution Hall on Saturday night at a performance featuring Railbird, Mathew Loiacono and Matt Durfee (who will also help Alta Mira fill out its sound during the show).

In keeping with the band's experimental tendencies, the release show itself is being dubbed an “experiment”. Along with performances, the hall will play host to installation artwork by Nick Reinert, and the band has teamed up with iPIX to record the show in 3D and make the video available online at a later date.

“We don't even know what it's going to look like; we haven't even been shown the technology yet, but from what Nick Cosimano [head of Indian Ledge] says, it's pretty mind-blowing,” Michon-Huneau said. “He said the only way he can describe it is that it sort of feels like you're expanding your peripheral vision.”

The band – featuring Sagehorn's brother Hunter on guitar and Tommy Krebs on drums – first came together in 2004, Michon-Huneau, at the time playing guitar in an acoustic duo, tried out as vocalist for the then three-piece band, which at the time was also acoustic. “We didn't have very good equipment at all,” Michon-Huneau explained.

The band's initial funk-driven sound presented a challenge to him vocally. “I wasn't really used to that style, but I was like 'Oh, I'll give it a shot,'” he said. “I never really tried to get outside of my range before. These guys constantly push me to do different things with my voice that I didn't think I could do with it.”

Soon the groups began gigging at coffee shops in the area. “We used to play Caffe Lena's a lot – I think they were sick of us after a while,” Michon-Huneau said.

By the release of the band's first EP, the music had gone completely electric. The self-titled debut continues in the vein, with songs such as “The End of My” built around multiple guitar lines and
rich vocal harmonies.


RECENT SONGS

Roughly half the songs on the album were written only this year, although others such as “To Clear the Moon” have been in the band's repertoire for some time now. The group's members filled out the album's sound with piano, mandolin and guitar effects that were found in the studio.

“Taylor [Barefoot, studio owner] has just a wall of guitars and a floor's worth of effects pedals that we were able to screw around with at will,” Michon-Huneau said. “He had, I think, two different, or
three different rooms that we would try to record different parts in. I know I did vocals in four different areas.”


- Brian McElhiney

Daily Gazette, 12.3.09
- Daily Gazette

In the spotlight
December 3, 2009 Alta Mira


Capital Region up-and-comer Alta Mira is throwing a party Saturday night to celebrate the release of its new self-titled CD, but it's not all about Alta Mira. This show features a number of prominent artists; Railbird, Matthew Loiacono and Matt Durfee.

In fact, the event is billed as "the Alta Mira CD Release Experiment."

There will be cutting-edge 360-degree video being filmed, and large-scale sculpture and light-based installations will be interspersed throughout the venue. Collaboration will be the underlying theme of the evening.

That and music. Recorded at Barefoot Studios in Massachusetts over a two-year period, the new album shows that the band -- Tommy Krebs (drums, mandolin, piano, vocals) Hunter Sagehorn (guitar, banjo, slide, piano vocals) August Sagehorn (bass, vocals) and Joe Michon-Huneau (vocals) -- have taken it up a level since 2007's "Fables and Fabrications."

From the riveting "Tambourine," soothing "Sinker/Or," sinister "Slumberjack" and the layered "Harder The Fall," as a unit Alta Mira has grown far more compelling and intriguing, as singer Michon-Huneau has come into his own with his impassioned delivery and conviction.

At a recession-friendly $10, this could be the party of the year. Don't miss it.

When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Revolution Hall, 425 River St., Troy
Tickets: $10
Info: 274-0553; http://www.revolutionhall.com/
-- David Malachowski
- The Times Union

Review was for Lisa Germano who Alta Mira had opened for, at the bottom of Lisa's review read:

... Opening the show was Alta Mira, a young quartet from Clifton Park, whose music seemed to draw on the past several decades of art-rock, fusing together the intricate arrangements and musicianship of the classic '70s progressive rock bands, the herky-jerky new wave rhythms of XTC and the passionate vocals of Jeff Buckley. - The Times Union

In recent years, the home for atmospheric big beat rock has either been masked by enchantment or simply burned to the ground. When nineties hard rock fans have nowhere to turn, surrounded by Hinder and Nickelback clones, Yes fans are ready to lay their weary bones down because they've heard all there is to hear, and even Yorke-philes are ready to admit that perhaps Radiohead truly has gone a bit far on the vision quest, the idea of accessible yet soulful art rock seems lost to David Byrne's swamp. Enter Indian Ledge Records and their new poster child Alta Mira. The band is an anthemic rock wet dream, at once comfortable in misty bars and sold out stadiums, and calling pointedly on the heyday of solid rock and roll, whether one finds that in the pulsing art pretension of Talking Heads, the grunge sensibilities and harmonizing of Jerry Cantrell, the crooning sensitivity of Jeff Buckley, or the modest sprinkling of ambition found in The Bends era Radiohead.

However, a glance at the track listing to the band's first offering, The Fables and Fabrications EP alerts the listener that this will be no cake walk, easy listen. The opening track's title, "The Berlin Waltz," tells us a couple of things about what we are about to hear. First, your garden variety hard rock outfit doesn't attempt a waltz lightly, and one wonders if we're going to be seeing some Elliott Smith stylings from the ambitious young upstate New Yorkers. Alta Mira's rhythm section (Tommy Krebs, August Sagehorn) manipulates the challenging clash of genres effortlessly. Secondly, the addressing of Berlin suggests an understanding of European culture, which to the average American might as well equate to existentialism. Indeed, in your search for the comfort of good times rock and roll (a la Tool), you may just have stumbled on something very adult here. Just because lead singer Joe Michon-Huneau isn't belting out enigmatic riddles does not mean he doesn't know what he is talking about.

The New Wave influence is hard to ignore here. "Apnea" recalls what Echo & The Bunnymen would have written if they ever grew up past brit pop Oasis clones...oh, and if they rocked. The title track employs the practiced droning of so many of the art-rock acts of the nineties, and calculatedly offers what can only be called a Corgan-esque crescendo for a catharsis in every verse. The conciseness of the record reflects the intelligence of the band as a whole. At a slim five tracks, there is an inherent understanding that there is potential for Alta Mira overload. The band is not yet ripe for the full length epics clearly stated as eventual ambitions in the EP's undertones. They teeter on greatness, as the infant Mozart must have appeared as he learned to walk; the excitement here is the obvious potential of a band with clear and solid influences, and their letting us in on the ground floor.
- Broken Dial - by Mark Hurley (Sept., 2007)

Birthed in Clifton Park, New York, barely legal quartet Alta Mira is out to impress with their first CD Fables and Fabrications. This semisweet, self-proclaimed indie group is much more than just your average boy band. Their debut album consists of five surprisingly well-produced songs that often recall a more vociferous Verve Pipe, or subtler Incubus. On “Cloud 8½,” singer Joe Michon-Huneau shows off his powerhouse pipes, while brothers Hunter and August Sagehorn complement each other on guitar and bass, taking you on a complicated daydream, where time just seems to stop. Perhaps their most pungent track, “Apnea,” delivers delicate rock undertones and intoxicatingly intricate guitar riffs over high doses of superb singing. “Sifting Through the Dust” leads with a heavy drum intro by Tommy Krebs that gives way to an elaborate courtship between guitar and vocals as Michon-Huneau pleads, “I’ve never needed codependency / don’t give up on me / exiled, an effigy.” With tracks as assiduous as these, it won’t be long before Alta Mira makes world domination their destination. - Chronogram- by Lindsay Malachowski (November, 2007)