Alpha Tracks explores the limitless possibilities of his craft in a weekly subscription program allowing kindred spirits to immerse themselves in his real-time music production for a whole year. Minimal Collective presents the third bundle of Alpha Tracks’ periodic EP releases, which are characterised by playfulness, spontaneity, and surprise. Subscribers of Alpha Tracks’ project can expect extensive and intricate sounds in the outer space of music that disregard tempo boundaries and genre conventions.
Alpha Tracks, also known as Felix Benedikt, is a Vienna-based producer who draws inspiration from the early '90s rave era. Rather than treating aesthetic taboos or fragments of maligned genres as a retro fetish, he incorporates them into his contemporary work with a playful Viennese touch. Characteristics that are also embedded in Alpha Tracks’ subscription program in which he independently rethinks the conventional approach to music distribution and knits a close net between supporters, friends and affiliated artists. But whose words could capture the essence of this project more accurately than those of Alpha Tracks?
‘The project will be explored together with my audience as we travel along through the vast and complex outer space of music. Having the experience of being a label owner and organising parties, collaborating and being with the crowd, I have always tried to incorporate an awareness of the music industry‘s mechanisms. After more than a decade of working with vinyl (producing, selling, collecting, gifting, swapping, and losing), I want to deviate from the sluggish times of the last few years and rethink my approach to music distribution. To achieve this I will use the Bandcamp Subscription Service. After signing up, subscribers will receive a track every Thursday throughout the whole year of 2023. You’ll receive 52 tracks and at the end of each month, non-subscribers will be able to buy the monthly digital EPs. Dividing the year into 4 seasons, every quarter‘s content will be presented in a continuous mix made by affiliated artists and friends. The fast rhythm of the output is an integral part of the framework because it encourages more playfulness, spontaneity, and surprise. I’ll experiment with making versions of tracks by expanding the duration, multiplying, and reconfiguring the order of my material. Appropriated, sampled, and recorded fragments will reappear to disturb the semantics of a conventional album, releasing different meanings after each slightly shifted repetition. Thus interrelations between the output can stretch over a year‘s time, poking at sonic memory and rigid listening behaviour.’
Minimal Collective presents the third track of the March EP. A highly energetic build-up along striking synth repetitions and spellbinding rhythms. The track's fast-paced and psychedelic nature is centred around repetitive, layered, and delayed vocal recordings. The hypnotising voices create an odd yet contagious feeling of speed, balancing right at the intersection of vigour and levity. Alpha Tracks establishes a rich sonic basis with driving kicks while entrancing melodies round up the trip. This track is a highly impactful accelerator for the modern-day dancefloor.