The dance floor as devotional is a trope as old as the club itself. But, with her new album, Jesus Was An Alien, Perel subverts the stakes of our collective communion: Who are our arms raised to? Who are we seeking salvation from?
“Jesus Was An Alien is a discourse about whether Jesus was an actual alien,” she explains, “but also a social debate about what is and implies religion today.” She offers up her provocative second record – her first on Kompakt – as a soundtrack for the listener’s own journey through the intricacies and ironies of modern belief.
Picking up on the themes she brought to her debut, the 2018’s LP Hermetica on DFA, Perel has created ten tracks rich with spirit and allusion. Her influences are myriad, from the indie dance hitmakers of the early 2000s – Hot Chip, Simian Mobile Disco, Justice – to rave compilations that predate her ascent to the DJ booth, to more abstract inputs. Living with synesthesia, she says, “I feel emotions and colors piling up inside me, then there’s a triggering sound or event that opens a valve. My tracks are color streams that tell a story.”
Jesus Was An Alien is not just multicolored – it’s multi-lingual too, slipping in and out of tongues in a single track, sometimes dispensing with words altogether (the ecstatic breakdown of “The Principle of Vibration”). The album features Perel’s voice almost entirely but for her special collaboration with Canadian songwriter Marie Davidson on the title track.
“Jesus Was An Alien” stirs like a late-night revelation, a heady discovery awakened in the dark. Perel lays out a fiercely disciplined electro pulse, with Davidson’s proclamations growing more fervent over the song’s sensual stride. “I already said everything with my synthesizers and the melodies I created,” Perel explains of the collaboration, but “somehow she gave the song a voice I couldn’t.”
Perel drives further not only spiritually but sonically across the ten tracks, taking thrilling production risks: standouts include her breathy vocals atop a melodic piano strut on “Matrix;” the delirious blur of ghostly chimes and disembodied voices of “Religion;” and the retro radiance of “The Principle of Vibration,” in which Perel exhorts us to “come on and vibe” over an athletic riff and shuffling percussion.
“Kill The System,” meanwhile, hits the listener with tense acid pulses, building to only an imagined release and calls out the end of patriarchy. Album closer “Am Kanal” starts as a pensive cloud of a track, finally breaking into a rich textural rain of synths and stabs.
The variety throughout Jesus Was An Alien underlines Perel’s purpose in this latest project; she’s experimenting her way to answers – or maybe just more questions. After all, she says, “questions are the beginning of something new.”
虔诚的舞池是一个与俱乐部本身一样古老的比喻。但是，凭借她的新专辑《耶稣是外星人》，佩雷尔颠覆了我们集体交流的赌注：我们向谁举手？我们向谁寻求救恩？
“耶稣是外星人是关于耶稣是否是一个真正的外星人的话语，”她解释说，“但也是一场关于当今宗教是什么以及意味着什么的社会辩论。”她提供了她挑衅性的第二张唱片——她在 Kompakt 上的第一张唱片——作为听众自己穿越现代信仰的错综复杂和讽刺的旅程的配乐。
Perel 继承了她为她的首张专辑带来的主题，即 2018 年 DFA 上的 LP Hermetica，创作了十首富有精神和典故的曲目。她的影响是无数的，从 2000 年代初期的独立舞蹈制作人——Hot Chip、Simian Mobile Disco、Justice——到她登上 DJ 展台之前的狂野合辑，再到更抽象的输入。她说，与联觉一起生活，“我感到情绪和色彩在我体内堆积，然后有一个触发声音或事件打开一个阀门。我的曲目是讲述故事的彩色流。”
耶稣是外星人不仅是五彩斑斓的——它也是多语言的，在一个单一的轨道上进进出出，有时完全不用词（“振动原理”的欣喜若狂的崩溃）。这张专辑几乎完全采用了佩雷尔的声音，但要归功于她与加拿大词曲作者玛丽戴维森在主打歌上的特别合作。
“耶稣是外星人”就像一个深夜的启示，一个在黑暗中醒来的令人兴奋的发现。佩雷尔布置了一个纪律严明的电脉冲，戴维森的宣言在这首歌的感性步伐中变得更加热烈。 “我已经用我的合成器和我创作的旋律说出了一切，”佩雷尔解释了这次合作，但“不知何故，她给了这首歌我无法表达的声音。”
Perel 在十首曲目中不仅在精神上而且在声音上更进一步，冒着激动人心的制作风险：杰出的包括她在“Matrix”中的旋律钢琴支柱上呼吸的声音；幽灵般的钟声和“宗教”的虚幻声音的迷离；以及“振动原理”的复古光芒，其中佩雷尔告诫我们要“来吧，感受”运动的即兴演奏和随机打击乐。
与此同时，“杀死系统”以紧张的酸脉冲击中听众，建立一个想象中的释放，并呼吁父权制的终结。专辑收尾曲“Am Kanal”从一首沉思的曲目开始，最终变成了合成器和 stabs 的丰富纹理雨。
贯穿《耶稣是外星人》的多样性突出了佩雷尔在这个最新项目中的目的。她正在尝试用她的方式来回答——或者可能只是更多的问题。毕竟，她说，“问题是新事物的开始。”
