Alien whale perform live at Death by Audio, Brooklyn NY, 4/13/12
A review of ALIEN WHALE at Supersonic 2014, Birmingham UK
“Then, one of the weekend’s mightiest acts stormed the stage, early evening light still dappling, even though their crazed sounds were meant for the midnight hour. Alien Whale brings together the tri-borough (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens) New Yorkers Colin Langenus (guitar [formerly of USA is a Monster]), Matt Mottel (keytar [of Talibam!]), and Nick Lesley (drums [of Necking]), three musical maniacs with a desperate rapport, once again taking a form, psychedelic jazz-rock, and bending it into an extreme parody—thrilling, absurd, macho and moronic, virtuosic and violent. Mottel and Langenus were vying for supremacy as they traded ever more elaborate solos, kept aloft and limber by Lesley’s whipcrack patterns. When Langenus was rising up to solo dominance, Mottel maintained a rippling bass flow, but when the keytar-slinger came forth himself, the treble end suddenly ripped into glorious primacy, in a rocked up Terry Riley rupture of rapture. They played like it was their final show, as if it was the latest, most drink’n’drug fuelled nightcap possible.”
