William Brittelle — Alive in the Electric Snow Dream

William Brittelle & metropolis ensemble

Alive in the Electric Snow dream

On Friday, February, 23, 2024, William Brittelle, the Grammy-winning Brooklyn-based composer and producer known as “a mercurial artist whose oeuvre embraces post-punk flamboyance, chamber music elegance, and much more” (The New Yorker), and whose past collaborators include Roomful of Teeth, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce Dessner (The National), Son Lux, Oneohtrix Point Never, A Far Cry, Duran Duran, Wye Oak, and David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors) releases his mini-album Alive in the Electric Snow Dream via New Amsterdam Records.

Alive in the Electric Snow Dream presents Brittelle's collage-like compositional style at its most extreme and enveloping. Every gesture erupts out of the previous one in a constantly evolving fever dream filled with a swirl of vintage synths, pop vocals, saxes, guitars, noise, screams, and strings outlining a dreamlike, first person apocalyptic vision.

Developed and recorded during the pandemic with Metropolis Ensemble, Alive in the Electric Snow Dream features Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Bon Iver), Holland Andrews, and Eliza Bagg (Roomful of Teeth, Lisel) on vocals, Immanuel Wilkins on sax, Ben Cassorla on guitar, Paul Wiancko (Kronos Quartet, OWLS) on strings, Brad Balliett on distorted bassoon, and Brittelle on synthesizers, percussion, and electronics. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream was mixed by Zach Hanson (Bon Iver, S. Carey), the Wisconsin-based mixing engineer responsible for Roomful of Teeth's Grammy-nominated Rough Magic and Spektral Quartet/Julia Holter/Alex Temple's Behind the Wallpaper, both produced by Brittelle and released last year.

As a science fiction-obsessed child of the 1980's, William Brittelle has long found dystopian landscapes to be a source of fascination and mangled nostalgia. In 2017, on a whim, he visited Fort Tilden, an abandoned army base on the bleeding edge of Queens, and was immediately captivated. He shortly joined a local arts organization and was given access to a studio in one of the former barracks. Though lacking heating and running water, the room gave Brittelle year-round access to the surrounding world of corroding munitions bunkers, vine covered hangars, and pristine beaches. On a frigid January seaside walk Brittelle happened upon a shipwreck, his prints in the sand and snow the only within sight, and began to imagine a backstory to the scene. Over the following two years, Alive in the Electric Snow Dream emerged — a swirl of vintage synths, pop vocals, saxes, guitars, noise, screams, and strings outlining a dreamlike, first person apocalyptic vision. A mix of terror, wonder, adrenaline, and exhaustion, the piece, in eleven blistering minutes, explores a full range of psychedelic emotion.
A companion piece to the recently Grammy-nominated ‘Psychedelics’ for Roomful of Teeth (the two were written concurrently), Snow Dream presents Brittelle's collage-like compositional style at its most extreme and enveloping.Developed and recorded during the pandemic with Metropolis Ensemble, Alive in the Electric Snow Dream features Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Bon Iver), Holland Andrews, and Eliza Bagg (Roomful of Teeth, Lisel) on vocals, Immanuel Wilkins on sax, Ben Cassorla on guitar, Paul Wiancko (Kronos Quartet, OWLS) on strings, Brad Balliett on distorted bassoon, and Brittelle on synthesizers, percussion, and electronics. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream was mixed by Zach Hanson (Bon Iver, S. Carey), the Wisconsin-based mixing engineer responsible for Roomful of Teeth's Grammy-nominated Rough Magic and Spektral Quartet/Julia Holter/Alex Temple's Behind the Wallpaper, both produced by Brittelle and released last year.
The B-side of Snow Dream contains ‘Dido's Lament (Revisited)’, a feminist retelling of the Dido and Aeneas myth anchored by Henry Purcell's famous aria ‘When I am Laid in Earth’ (aka ‘Dido's Lament’). Originally premiered by Wild Up and Zola Jesus in January 2019 on the Ecstatic Music Festival, the piece again features Jenn Wasner on vocals alongside stunning appearances by the fiercely talented Holland Andrews. Andrews threads in the original aria throughout the 10-minute epic, culminating in a stunning and brutally cathartic re-interpretation of Purcell's original. Metropolis again forms the ensemble, adding Brad Balliett on distorted bassoon.
All sales proceeds from Alive in the Electric Snow Dream will go directly to New Amsterdam, a Brooklyn-based non-profit artist service organization, in perpetuity. Cover art is an original piece by Brock Leffert

Tracklist
1. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: I. #ODeath
2. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream : II. Puking Rainbows
3. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: III. This Fortress
4. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: IV. Asphodel Meadows
5. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: V. My Memorex
6. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: VI. Pure Sacrifice
7. Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: VII. Los Angeles 2091
8. Dido's Lament (Revisited)
9. Dido's Lament (Revisited) - Single Edit
Credits
Composed by: William Brittelle
Ensemble: Metropolis Ensemble
Voice: Jenn Wasner, Holland Andrews, Eliza Bagg
Sax: Immanuel Wilkins
Distorted Bassoon: Brad Balliett
Guitar: Ben Cassorla
Strings: Paul Wiancko
Synthesizers, percussion, and electronics: William Brittelle
Mixed by: Zach Hanson