This may be the most sophisticated break-up album ever recorded. Portugal’s Rui P. Andrade has produced an electronic ode to heartbreak that is both sad and gripping.
All Lovers Go To Heaven features four pieces of primarily atmospheric drone recordings. “A.L.G.T.H.,” a kind of overture for the album, starts quietly. The piece is spacious, but unsettling too. The first four minutes of the album makes it clear: something important has gone wrong. Andrade proceeds to layer in gentle noise elements. There is tension, but nothing builds. The beginning of the album feels very much like an ending.
Next is “Only To Become Water.” A distant horn sounds, amidst a sea of quiet static. The setting may be nautical, but the feeling is all about loneliness. At 11:31, this is the album’s longest work. It sets a gloomy mood.
“Violet-Red” adds a remarkable spoken word recording. “On the last day of August, you called me 89 times,” reads the young European woman. She sounds painfully beautiful and hopelessly romantic. “You promised you would never leave me.”
It’s not all greeting card clichés though. What’s most charming about the piece is the humanity of the read. Mistakes are made, and left in. She laughs at herself. “This is so true,” she says. It’s just meta enough to feel spontaneous.
The half-hour long work ends with “She Strikes As A Belgian Shepherd.” More intense than the other pieces, it feels less like a heart on the mend than it does a reflection of the humanity of aloneness. It’s not an unpleasant listen at all, but clearly there is a thick layer of sadness beneath the gentle electronics.
A great success.
Kevin Press