The cover/photo of this album, and its title describe everything…
An out-of-focus human figure laying on the seaside, melting sundown colours and the title ‘Come From Heaven‘.
Corin Dingley and Andy Jenks as Alpha, offer us an inexpressible gift. Their debut ‘Come From Heaven‘ (1997), really seems to be coming from heaven. How can you describe an album that sounds like an illusion?
The album is registered under file “trip hop” but the reality is a little bit different. It sounds like a combination of atmospheric trippy down-tempo, post trip hop, and 60s pop music with perfectly used samples under a perfect production that gives out a dizzy, dreamy feeling full of emotion.
The magical opening track ‘My Things‘, is a representative song that helps us understand what happens here. A hallucinogenic instrumental with soft waves of strings/keyboards that creates a heavenly melody. ‘My Things‘ is a masterpiece beyond belief; like a dream within a dream… ‘Slim‘ is driven by a weird riff and desperate vocals of Helen White, creeps in dark paths, under the misty moon of Postishead. ‘Sometime Later‘ is another heart-storming highlight. The softly nu jazz brush, touches at drumming, the melting atmosphere, the heavenly orchestra. Martin Bernard sings with broken voice “Touch my hand It’s only me, listen I’m here. Come to stand In sultry fields With you. And now Old dummy day I know Is over this way”... An incredible masterpiece of love and heartbreak, a song that describes what it is to fall in love. Songs like ‘Rain‘, ‘Come From Heaven‘, ‘Nyquil‘, ‘Hazeldub‘ float harmonic in the same atmosphere. In the irresistible, melancholic beauty of ‘Firefly‘ Martin sings with closed eyes..
“Who begins a star?
Who will roll far?
Took the way I know
Move along now
So sad I lost my memory
The shape of things to come
Circus heart stops inside me
There’s just no time”..
The album’s closing with the quintessential hymn of love ‘Somewhere Not Here‘ is so shattering. The angelic voice of Wendy Stubbs, and the heart melting music so elf-like & elegant, drifts you blindly, somewhere away from the ‘here’ and ‘now’. You’re off to an earthly paradise of love, sentiments and passion.
The sensation is one of “off focus” and half asleep or half awake in paradise with the strongest feelings of love and sweet melancholy. ‘Come From Heaven‘ is the album that grows deep inside our hearts. It is a siren that drifts you away when you are in love, the album that makes you cry and feel lost when love has been lost. Ι am totally mesmerized…
Theodoros Rentesis