“With Year of the Statement, artist Ali Beletic is cementing her place as a firm part of the new wave of female artist, singers, beatmakers and producers with her vibrant and fun, even arty celebratory beats, cinematic narratives, and hyper modern production.“
“A fusion of genres and music both traditional and futuristic” - Stere0gum
Lightning Studios is excited to announce the release of Alivenique’s debut full length album Year of the Statement. Alivenique is the new pop art music project of visual artist and producer/singer Ali Beletic. Advance album singles have been featured on NPR Music, TalkHouse, Stereogum, and Flood Music.
From the outset of her career as an artist and musician, Ali has rebelled against convention, juxtaposing editorial, personal narrative and vanguardism. For her, Year of the Statement is the blowing of the conch shell on this new project Alivenique, where she plays with a more sophisticated, developed, self-aware artistry, laying the foundation for femininity going forward, telling a global story, and bringing punk into pop-art.
Themes on Year of the Statement include womanhood and the female spirit, the new integration of the avant-garde with pop art, primitivism, ceremony, the lexus and the olive tree, power, champion, globalism, and love. However, she intends to define the space for extroverts and party-ers working with dance beats, percussion collages, and her contribution to a new neon global sound.
The record sonically traverses a lot of soundscapes, from vibrant party tracks like Cachaça and Move the Needle to loud, explosive, badass feminine tracks such as Year of the Statement and Ruins of Night, to artistic hyper pop tracks such as Vanguards and Candlelit Jungle. All with clever narratives taking us on tropical and lush journeys through time and place, nature, art, cinema and world travels. Hyper mixing modern 808’s, world percussion, catchy syncopapted 16th note defiant vocals and soaring melismas full of swagger, the sonic production literally moves from beats, stories, musique concrete, samples and reverbs that travel from jungle to the orchestra to vintage french pop sing along in a fluid motion.
Composed electronically, Ali builds beats from layers and layers of recorded and sampled percussion and pairing this with unique combinations of cinematic strings, distorted synths, and rattling 808s. She was wanting a more inclusive, extroverted sound after the intimate and desert hues of her last record, so she turned to modern production. In general, her art and music have been turning to a more pop-art perspective.
“I am working in a post-genre space, mixing all sorts of sonic palettes, and musical influences, really working with how this harmonic idea might fit over this beat, and what that juxtaposition means and how to EQ it just right to communicate different emotions to the listener. It’s super cool to be a woman bringing those different aspirations together, as so often I feel like we get a little bit relegated to singer, or poppy, which I totally identify with, I just also totally identify with songwriting, making beats, and digging deep into arranging, production and mixing techniques.”
This switch to a more pop art approach in her music mirrored a similar development in her visual art as well, where she transitioned from Earth Art installations and experiences to a more two dimensional Pop Art space, her land themes translated into clay and dye backgrounds set against eye catching neon foreground in her Neon Prmitivism painting series which as been celebrated by Vogue, Ignant, and Architectural Digest, and featured in collections across the world. Similarly, her music developed away from the more intimate, handmade scale of her first record that drew comparisons to Cat Power and Bill Callahan, where the lyrics drew on her thesis of shared human tradition and mythology, to a more extroverted, pop, electronic space, that draws these themes into the use of traditional percussion and vast cinematic sonic landscapes.
“During my time in film school, I developed this concept of the ‘Hyper Real’ - a way that filmmaking recreates the “real”, but as heightened sensual experience - this is certainly one of my inspirations sonically with the Alivenique project and the Year of the Statement record to invite the listener into a sensual experience - a hyper real. I’ve been using all the latest production techniques, to sort of go in and find a new process for both writing, but also mixing, and creating a unique listener experience. Utilizing a global sonic association/post genre palette while writing, playing on listener associations, as well as sensual sonic techniques.”
Ali mentioned “I was super inspired writing more electronically, and making beats, as I was able to bring to life music that I had sort always envisioned in my head, but isn’t possible using only the palette of guitar, piano, and vocals - which are the instruments I play,” and goes on to say “There are less female voices in the modern pop beat and production space and I thought my sense of modern femininity could not only be expressed in this part of the world, but influential and contributive.”
“As an artist, I look at the broad spectrum of people and cosmologies to influence my own worldview and the concept of our shared narrative. I believe in a citizen of the earth sort of perspective and am interested in the intersection and differences in worldviews and how that can inform us as a global society and people. So philosophically, I hold what I call a pluralist philosophy where we can employ and believe in multiple worldviews simultaneously.”