ARP

Arp constitutes the artistic vehicle of New York City-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Alex Georgopolous, whose output stretches from austere synthesizer studies to oblique singer/songwriter constructions. After serving as a member of the dance-rock ensemble Tussle throughout the early 2000s, he stepped forward as a solo practitioner in 2007 with the largely electronic, trance-inducing In Light. The 2010 follow-up The Soft Wave broadened his palette through thicker orchestration, while 2013’s More steered the project toward experimental pop forms that occasionally recalled Baroque conventions. In 2018 he inaugurated a projected trilogy with Zebra, an album whose lush, earth-toned sonics drew on Fourth World fusion and cosmic jazz; the second chapter, New Pleasures, arrived in 2022.

Born in the United States to French and Greek parents and raised across those three nations, Georgopolous began his musical life in San Francisco. There he helped establish the instrumental dance-rock quartet Tussle in the early 2000s, contributing primarily as bassist, drummer, and percussionist. Following the completion of the group’s second album, Telescope Mind, he left to pursue a solo endeavor centered on synthesized electronic textures. The resulting project, named Arp, took its title from Halton C. Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, the artists Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Jean Arp, the former synthesizer manufacturer, and the phonetic proximity of the word to “harp.”

The moniker’s first manifestation was a 2006 gallery installation created with an architect: a sealed modular environment containing a feather bed sized for two listeners, inside which minimalist synthesizer pieces played on continuous loop. Several of those compositions later appeared on the 2007 debut album In Light, issued by Smalltown Supersound. Recorded almost entirely live with an assortment of analog synthesizers and sparing additions of flute and piano, the set openly referenced the early-1970s work of Cluster and Kraftwerk. The year 2010 brought both the Arp album The Soft Wave and a Frkwys series installment recorded with Slapp Happy founder Anthony Moore.

Arp material subsequently appeared in runway presentations, films, contemporary dance works, and numerous other contexts. Georgopolous also collaborated extensively with visual artists including Doug Aitken, Matt Connors, and Chris Johansen, performed as a member of the exploratory instrumental psych-folk trio the Alps, and briefly belonged to the DFA-associated project Q&A. Outside these activities he maintained a parallel practice as a writer on art, music, and design while organizing concerts, film screenings, and related events.

With 2013’s More the project moved away from strict minimalism toward experimental yet song-based terrain. Late the following year the EP Pulsars e Quasars appeared, juxtaposing Eno-derived passages with more radical experiments. Under the name Masks, Georgopolous and Max Ravitz (Patricia) issued the abstract-techno EP Food Plus Drug (II) on Opal Tapes. Geographic North released the cassette Inversions in 2016, compiling pieces originally composed for the 2014 installation In Waves. Zebra emerged in 2018, merging earlier minimalist and cosmic threads with sonorities drawn from 1980s Japanese pop and light synth-boogie. Georgopolous convened a live band to perform the album, then re-recorded selected tracks with the ensemble; those versions, augmented by four new compositions, were issued in 2019 as the limited-vinyl mini-album Ensemble Live. New Pleasures, the trilogy’s second installment, followed in 2022, replacing Zebra’s measured electro-acoustic mood with brisker, more futuristic electronics and denser arrangements.