ALPHA LIGHTING SYSTEM
The Mexico City quartet find their sweet spot in short-form progressive rock.
WHILE COMPOSING THEIR third album, H+, Alpha Lighting System developed a passion for writing music for each other. Straying from the elongated jams that defined their first two releases, the Mexican band vied to scintillate the taste buds of their fellow bandmates with their ideas.
“The most important thing for us is sharing music with each other,” says keyboardist/vocalist Alam Hernández, whose soulful voice is at times hauntingly reminiscent of Steven Wilson.“Every one of us in the band has a different musical focus, be it jazz, extreme prog metal, like Meshuggah, or classics like Genesis and King Crimson. When Jaco [Jácome, bass] first introduced us to [the music of] Mr Bungle that’s all we listened to for about a month. Suddenly we were all coming up with ideas that sounded like Mr Bungle. And that was the same for all of our influences. We would think,‘What could I do here that would make Jaco or Joshua [San Martín, guitar] happy?’ and that’s when things really started to work. Blending each other’s favourite music together helps our songs sound very ‘us’.”
It’s an approach that’s seen their creativity blossom. By writing in styles outside of their own listening spheres, they’ve broadened their individual songwriting palettes and gifted their overarching sound a far more vivid, engaging personality. This, alongside the decision to write more concise but still progressive music, has made all the difference.
It’s turned the band, which originally formed to play Porcupine Tree covers at a school talent show, into an established musical force.
“We realised that our longer songs were very challenging for audiences when we performed live,” reflects Juan Gabriel Hernández Sr, the drummer who is like a father to the whole band and not just his keyboard-playing son.“When we started to shorten the songs we found they functioned so much better.”
That discovery was fuelled too by their participation in a song contest ran by System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian.
“For the contest, Serj gave you seven notes and you had to compose a three-minute song with them,” expands Joshua San Martín, whose playing on H+ is both fierce and fluid.“At first we didn’t think we could write a song that short, because we’d never written anything under six or seven minutes before. It really compressed our usual format, but we found that limitations could be incredibly inspiring.”
This succinctness saw the band learning to prioritise quality over quantity, raising them to a much higher level in the process. They say more here in three or four-minute bursts than they previously did with tracks that often broke the 10-minute mark.
“The album, musically and conceptually, is very bipolar,” Hernández Jr muses. “There is something very introspective and sentimental about it, but there is another side to it that is more aggressive. We wanted it to be very singable but still quite challenging and complex. That concept really leant to what we were trying to achieve. For us, it’s very a special album.” POW
“WE’D NEVER WRITTEN ANYTHING UNDER SIX OR SEVEN MINUTES BEFORE, BUT WE FOUND THAT LIMITATIONS COULD BE INCREDIBLY INSPIRING.”