Ale Hop – Bodiless
10.1.18 by Ryan Masteller

Imagine it. There you are, one minute, corporeal as anything, comfortable within the confines of your own body, then BAM! Everything you know is taken away from you, your body simply gone. Vanished, erased, deleted – but not from existence. Your mind is still there, your consciousness, disconnected from physical form. It peers into what you once recognized as life, but it’s adrift, lost at sea, destined to aimlessly roam. Bodiless.

Along comes Ale Hop, to bring the sounds of this experience to life. The Peruvian musician, based in Germany, has even titled her cassette on Buh Records “Bodiless,” which may or may not be a coincidence based on the event I was just imagining. But where I would’ve stopped chuckling somewhere in “Tron”-land, with the consciousness digitized for laser-bike races, Ale Hop goes beyond the idea, and takes it seriously. Over the course of the tape she sets the scene, beginning with ten minutes of disembodied sonics before coalescing into a narrative that shapeshifts from dense electronics to skewed pop and back, blurring the edges of style with ease, the edges of coherent thought with the utter strangeness of detachment.

Is this a commentary on internet culture and the immediacy of connectivity, like with the touch of a button you can be somewhere else, at least in spirit, without the need for your body to traverse the space between? Or is it an exploration of the inner workings of the human mind in relation to not needing the body so much anymore? Whatever it is, it’s fascinating, and you’ll be questioning absolutely EVERYTHING as you traverse the path, perhaps kissing your own molecules good-bye in the process.

And truly, it could be worse – it could be called “Headless.”

Think about that.

Edition of 50 tapes from Buh Records in Lima, Peru!