GTC VIDEO PREMIERE: ALEX STOLZE – Orphan [Andrea Huyoff, director]
Alex Stolze – Orphan is available at Nonostar Records.
A Global Texan Chronicles Exclusive
A highway drenched with sunlight, eerily empty of cars; a silhouetted figure dances and sings, accompanied only by his own shadow.
This is the scene of the new Alex Stolze video, Orphan, directed by artist Andrea Huyoff and released this Friday, August 21st, 2020, on Stolze’s Nonostar Records label. It’s taken from Stolze’s upcoming album Kinship Stories.
The song is driven by an irresistible groove, its understated texture giving way to glorious bursts of energy and colour. Minimal yet complex, an interlaying of percussion, pizzicato strings, sparse piano, and analog synthesis provides a basis for an astonishingly intimate work.
Himself the son of the orphan, and having lost his own father at a young age, Stolze’s lyrics come from a deeply personal viewpoint. There’s the sense that he’s talking at once to his own kin and to an entire generation of young people growing up in a time of uncertainty and change. “I can see a process of change in what you build on your own now: true values in a world of inconstancy,” sings Alex, his tone at once plaintive and optimistic, leading into the song’s rousing chorus line: “I am here to give you my word.”
Already well-known for his collaborative projects – as part of much-loved Berlin electronic trio, Bodi Bill and experimental group Dictaphone, among others – his emergence as a solo artist has given him a reputation for blending different musical worlds: from modern classical pieces to electronica and indie-pop.
Stolze also runs the Nonostar label, based at his remote studio on the German-Polish border. The border crossing is normally a busy highway, but this years’ lockdown measures saw it the border fully shut down – leaving the roads completely empty. Director Andrea Huyoff makes use of this unique setting in the video, placing Stolze on a bare highway surrounded by rolling borderland greenery. Her stark imagery seems at once to reflect the minimal production style and the sense of being orphaned: left alone in a sometimes incomprehensible world.
ALEX STOLZE
-ORPHAN-
Artist photo and film by Andrea Huyoff
Written, performed and produced by Alex Stolze
Mastered by Andreas Lupo Lubich at Calyx, Berlin
Artwork by Andrea Huyoff
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“Violinist, producer, and songwriter Alex Stolze has generated a well-deserved reputation, both as composer and collaborator, for his unique blending of different musical worlds. Shifting seamlessly between stark modern classical works, fiercely intelligent electronica and off-kilter indie pop, he manages to craft his own consistent sound throughout.” – bio