Le Voyage

iTunes Review

A supergroup of sorts, Alps features two underground favorites (Tarentel co-founder Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, ARP’s Alexis Georgopoulous ) and a part-time Troll — the band, not the storybook character — who peddles LPs at one of the country’s best record stores (Scott Hewicker of the San Francisco shop Aquarius Records). With a pedigree like that, you better believe Le Voyage is a strange trip indeed, from its short but surreal interludes (the wicked waltz of “Marzipan,” the dream sequence effects of “Petals”) to the towering trilogy that brings us all back down to earth. That’d be the chirping crickets, plaintive piano progressions and opium den overtones of “Black Mountain”; the cosmic Krautrock chords of the title track; and the penultimate psych-rock peaks of “Telepathe.” In the world of album closers, it’s a particularly heavy one, especially when compared to Le Voyage’s other bookend, the fireside finger-picking of “Drop In.” It's one of many unexpected moments in a record that owes more to old film scores and Serge Gainsbourg than anything else you'll hear this year.