Into Air

Into Air was the first track by The Alps to gain any attention in the UK. After not knowing what the hell we should sound like for a year or two and playing a bunch of Danny's old songs which were borrowed from his previous band, we started hitting something that felt better than anything else we'd cobbled together before. This was the first real Alps song written and performed by the core line up ever to see the light of day as a recorded track.

We submitted an mp3 to Claire Sturgess on Xfm unsigned and to our delight it won unsigned band of the week which in turn kicked everything off for us and led to management, a small indie record deal and all the rest of it. I remember being so amazingly excited when it was on the radio for the first time. We got everyone to ring in and vote for us, fun times. I think I was sat behind my desk back at Capcom when they played the track for the second time one Friday afternoon. I was so thrilled.

Strangely, we dropped the song from our live set shortly after this point at the recommendation of various A&R types that were sniffing around. I remember some dude from a major coming to our practice room and telling us how much he loved our music, the only thing stopping him from offering us a deal was that he thought none of our songs had real choruses! He told us to give him a shout back when we'd written some proper songs. What rot.

Into Air was the first track on which I played both guitar and keys live, that was hard let me tell you. I was pretty ropey on both guitar and keys in those days having spent the previous 7 years playing Tenor Sax, so it was a tricky task, but it was also awesome fun and it sounded great. The song itself is torn between a stomper and a ballad as you will hear. The verse is raucous with bendy guitar lines and ripping vocals but the bridge/chorus is etherial and light... airy in fact. You can choose whichever bit you fancy as the chorus, I don't think it matters.

I think this track is a real marvel. True it doesn't posses an epic chorus but this is more than made up for in the other sections. Or maybe I just like it and the A&R guy was right. Whatever, it never got its proper shot so I thought I'd post it here as the first track of 10 that never saw the light of day. I'll be intermittently posting about the rest as the mood takes me. Watch this space for more soon.

Into Air by elusivemusic

This is me at what I think is most likely The Metro, probably playing Into Air whilst fighting with a guitar, organ, piano and microphone. Glorious days. But I don't miss carrying all that crap around. My amp was flippin heavy too. No wonder I was such a skinny bugger! I think I maybe wearing flared jeans and Adidas trainers...