I met Jon via Instagram a few months back and really fell for his then new release “Summit”. I ended up featuring it on one of our editorials and something in me knew that Deviate would soon showcase some of his tunes down the road.
And… here we are. Yesterday, Jon released his 8th single “Focus”, featuring his signature bright, poppy synths and plucks of acoustic guitar.
Jon is the definition of a bedroom producer because of the fact that he produces of his tracks in…well… his bedroom. Traversing the fluid boundaries between house, chillwave, and hip hop, producer Jon Alpine’s sound is at once instantly recognizable and elusive, like a mountain peak emerging from the clouds. Channeling the powerful energy of the great outdoors with acoustic and electric guitar, synthesizers, found sounds and his own field recordings, Jon Alpine composes immersive, propulsive sonic landscapes equally suited to dark dance floors and lonely South American bus rides.
His music has appeared in The Inquisition of Camilo Sanz, a feature film, and his multimedia collaboration Subtunes (produced as Katakresis, a previous alias) won Best Music Video at the Raindance Film Festival in 2014. Jon regularly shares musical sketches and song-in-progress on his Instagram, where he gauges audience interest and experiments in a variety of styles.
Jon reflects on his new track below:
“Focus is actually an extension of a rough musical sketch I posted on Instagram a few weeks ago. Sketch 72 featured a bouncy, off-kilter beat, alongside echoing sine-wave synths and a vibey guitar drowned in reverb over the top. It got a huge response from my listeners and leaned in a creative direction I wanted to explore more so I knew I had to finish it out into a completed track. I’d say Focus sits in a sort of odd place between lo-fi house and melodic house, but the strong guitar melodies in particular are pretty unusual for those genres.”
As a melodic music listener I’m drawn to Jon’s tunes because of his repeat and add song structure. The beat you hear in the first few seconds is present throughout the whole song, but with additional pieces looped in. Alpine has this down to a science.
“At a higher level for me, Focus is a meditation on what it means to filter out the extraneous noise of life and art to hone in on what really matters. For me, that’s meant re-dedicating myself to my craft every single day as I seek to surprise and delight my listeners, while trusting my own instincts when it comes to aesthetics rather than boxing myself into a specific sub-genre.”
I’m a fan of pretty much anything Jon creates; his creativity and drive to put out unique tunes isn’t something you come across very often. And once again, this is not the last you will see of Jon Alpine.
Be sure to check out “focus” out now on all streaming platforms.
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