Alivenique

LTG 022 // Alivenique // Masculin Féminin

Lightning Studios is excited to release “Masculin Féminin”, out on August 3rd, 2022: the fifth installment of Alivenique’s Year of the Statement.

"This is a reflection, a memoir, a look back on the impact that Chantal Goya, Godard, Pennebaker, Dylan, New York, Warhol and Pop Art had on me and my generation, personally writing my own story and also my own artistic narrative.  So I play with Godard’s description of the youth generation in Masculin Féminin, “Les Enfants de Marx and Coca-Cola” and extending the metaphor to my generation dubbing the continuation as “Les Enfants de Pop and Andy Warhol”.  Musically it features a fun mashup of vintage french pop, urban-indie post-dylan vocals, cinematic golden era background vocals, with the percussive perspective of the record worked in, climaxing into a soloist orchestral performance with soaring strings.   It features vocals in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.  It's the perfect surreal pop collage."

LTG 022 // Alivenique // Cachaça

Lightning Studios is excited to release “Cachaça”, out on July 6th, 2022: the fourth installment of Alivenique’s Year of the Statement.

"I love to throw parties and Cachaça has musical connections with some of my ideal party components - tropical plants, magical night time vibes, canoes with torches going up and down the river, and a festive dance spirit filling the night. This song features an awesome blend of world percussion, with synth and modern drum sounds and the catchy syncopated vocals pave the way the entire time." -Alivenique

LTG 022 // Alivenique // Vanguards

Lightning Studios is excited to release “Vanguards”, out on March 25th: the third installment of Alivenique’s Year of the Statement.

Slowing down for a minute, Vanguards is truly one of the more beautiful and groundbreaking songs on the record, highlighting the arty feminine throughline on the album.  Vanguards is about the feminine spirit as traveling through time - something as old as time, and maybe even older.  Something bold and beautiful, wise, wild, natural and uninhibited - musically and lyrically a feminine transcendentalism.  

Musically the song features super soulful bass and 808’s, earthy intimate rhythms featured in the claps, a super modern beautiful intimate post-jazz vocal that rides the line of power and peace, nostalgic soaring strings, wolf calls and heroic brass.  Vanguards is mixed to perfection, sonically referencing the ancient, but also modern using the latest bold space modulation and fx to really give it a hyper real sense of time and place.

There's something artistically magical about this song and how it blends the future and past, natural and supernatural. There is something very ancient in the music and at the same time something super fresh and modern.

“The idea of the mythological wolf calls during the intro and chorus was inspired by both my time spent in nature and as a student of wilderness survival, where I would literally spend hours daily in nature observing animal patterns and ecology as well as the incredibly inspired and poetic book by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.  If you don’t know her work, she is a really fascinating author and scholar, a Mestiza Latina author who was raised in now nearly vanished oral and ethnic traditions.  In the honor of these two inspirations, a portion of the proceeds of this song will be donated to both protecting the wolves and indigenous women’s causes.”

LTG 022 // Alivenique // Year of the Statement

Lightning Studios is excited to announce the debut Alivenique full length album “Year of the Statement”, coming 09/22, with the release of the title track on 02/25. Alivenique is the new, pop-art music project of singer/producer and visual artist Ali Beletic.

The song Year of the Statement picks up the pace from her previous, cinematic single Rain, and cements her place as a firm part of the new wave of female beatmakers and producers with her vibrant, arty, celebratory beats, and syncopated vocals. The track features an infectious talking drum beat that interlocks with a primal bassline supporting her 16th note, defiant vocal performance full of swagger in the verse that sets up and explodes into a colorful pop sing along at the chorus for all the extroverts out there.

For Ali, the song serves as a rally cry - loud, explosive, badass and feminine. It’s a rally cry to the artists, daredevils, the dreamers and the creatives out there,

“This song is dedicated to the dreamers, the provocateurs. It’s not about a medium, it’s about a spirit, a trickster. It’s about taking matters into your own hands and being provacative, but through action and change, rather than philosophical means. In a way it’s a call to action for my fellow artists, writers, creatives, it’s about not conforming ourselves. It’s a very self-empowered song, it’s about using your own hands to create what you want. Not using verbage, and the beat reflects that. I produced it to riff on a super modern, badass, celebrational, and ultra- feminine sense of power.”

LTG 022 // Alivenique // Rain

Lightning Studios is excited to announce Alivenique’s Rain, her first solo song of the year, foreshadowing what is to come with her Alivenique project, a pop music project infused with a more soulful cinematic journey - featuring modern pop art, bangers, intimate moments, and a lot of mise-en-scene and sonic storytelling that truly take us on an experiential journey.

Thematically, it’s an emergence song and brings us into the ceremonial aspect of her upcoming music journey, featuring collaged vocals, a post-genre mix of modern and traditional percussion, epic harmonies and delicate beautiful melismas that carry us through to the running bridge featuring interlocking synths and stick percussion, taking us on what feels like a run through the grasslands with a herd of Zebras.  Visceral and earthy, mythopoetic and cinematic with a pop twist.

“Alivenique is a transformative project for me - into a more emergent philosophically tropical side of self.  And this song is the blowing of the conch shell on that transformation - the touching on of the archetype of a mythological self who walks through the rain, and doesn’t get wet - Jung has likened the reception of call of the wild to the rain that quenches the dry earth, but on the flip side rain is often in literature the anthropomorphic tendency of the weather to reflect our hero’s internal dialogue, so it’s both about carrying our own weather and ‘weathering the storm’ as well as wanting more, wanting what’s beyond - It’s a call to action to the the mythologically destined in us.” -Ali Beletic

LTG 018 // Alivenique // Tune In (Prelude]

Lightning Records is excited to announce the new stand-alone single Tune In [Prelude] by Alivenique.

Tune In is the first release by Alivenique, the new future feminine meta pop-art music project of musician & artist Ali Beletic, and functions both as a a singular iconic call out, and as a prelude to her new musical project Alivenique.

From the outset of her career as an artist and musician, Ali has rebelled against convention, juxtaposing editorial, personal narrative and vanguardism. For her, “Tune In [Prelude]” is the blowing of the conch shell on her new pop-art project Alivenique, where she plays with a more sophisticated, developed self- aware artistry, laying the foundation for femininity going forward, telling a global story, and bringing punk into pop-art.

Composed electronically, building beats from layers and layers of recorded and sampled percussion and pairing this with unique combinations of distorted synths, cinematic strings, and rattling 808s, the Alivenique music is equal parts Brazilian dance party, and a soundtrack to Baraka if it was scored by a technicolor Ennio Morricone. Her first single “Tune In [Prelude]” is an immediate and iconic anthem that jumps right in and grabs your attention with an undeniable groove in blaring, distorted percussion. Ali has long been known to love throwing a good party, and this song is a call out to Ali’s new global, cinematic dance party, where everyone is invited. This particular song is perhaps cast at some long lost early 90’s warehouse dj party, or maybe its an early 00’s Brooklyn loft party – whereever it is it, the message couldn’t be any clearer that it is NOW.

Ali’s background is as a filmmaker and visual artist as well as musician. She studied classical voice while studying film at NYU, and then wrote her early music on guitar and piano and voice. In 2016, she released her debut record, Legends of These Lands Left to Live, which New York Magazine’s the Cut noted “has been uncommonly well-received by critics, at least one of whom compared her to James Dean (among a host of living rock legends).” NPR compared her music to Patti Smith and Cat Power, while Vice compared her music to early Dylan. The Guardian included her in their artists to watch in 2016 and New York Magazine’s the cut called her ‘the real deal’. It was also celebrated by writers from Stereogum, The Revue, LA Weekly, Impose and Consequence of Sound. Ali currently sells her artwork through her gallery in LA Tappan Collective.

The song is co-produced, recorded, and mixed with producer Seth Olinsky (Cy Dune/Akron/Family) at Lightning Studios in Southern CA, and then mastered by Chris Athens (Rosalia, Kendrick Lamar) at his studio in Texas.

Album cover photo by Ashley Sophia Clark.

“Alvenique, the new future femme art pop project from Ali Beletic couldn’t reveal itself at a better time. As we saw our country torn apart by division, her new single “Tune In [Prelude]” offers a catchy pop sound that’s also calming and contains a sound that falls perfectly on the ears. This song is just a wake up call for anyone who wants it.

The beat infused opening has a real future sound. With the vocals mixed in between the cluster of tones, the track has an immediacy to it with an overall fire sound. There’s an arty sound here where dark synths roll in underneath echoed vocals in a way that not only intrigues, but also grooves. The structuring of the song is filled with melodic hooks that echo back to eighties synthesizers while keeping your head bopping and getting your feet moving.” - ClosedCap

"The opening lyrics of this track are “now that I’ve got your attention.” It’s bold to claim that eight seconds into a song and further bold to repeat it throughout 3:40 of a tune, but Ali Beletic fully pays it off. The opening seconds are a highly manipulated set of notes and beats that serve as a hyperpop intro that’d make 100 Gecs jealous. The tune expands into a deep groove with the lyrics chanted like a mantra, and the combo of beats and bass-heavy notes is one that indeed grabs my attention. I can’t help but move when hearing it. It’s totally bereft of the dread and steely-eyed resolve that has characterized so much of the music in the last four years: check the steel drum sounds halfway through that celebrate themselves. This is music that’s urgent because it’s joyful and vital and powerful, and lo, we all need that right now. Highest recommendation." - Independent Clauses

“Without giving away too much of what the record has in store, the prelude demonstrates the LP’s sonic palette with tribal drumbeats and sunny synth lines soundtracking the songwriter’s looped vocal repetition of “Now that I’ve got your attention.” - Mike LeSeur Flood Magazine