Featuring members of Duster (Jason Albertini) & Built to Spill (Steve Gere). Recommended If You Like: Acetone, Chad VanGaalen, Duster, Built to Spill, The Olivia Tremor Control, Spirit of the Beehive. Essential Aliens is the 10th Helvetia album. Helvetia is the solo project of Jason Albertini from Duster. The songs on Essential Aliens were recorded over the last year in Jason's basement. Helvetia resides in Portland, Oregon but was formed in Seattle, Washington in 2005 after Duster first went on hiatus. Since the band’s inception, Jason has continued to employ a rotating cast of band members and collaborators, which now includes Steve Gere and Samantha Stidham. Steve and Jason also played in Built To Spill together from 2012 until 2018.
In 2019 Duster started playing shows and recording again. During this time Jason started writing what would become This Devastating Map. Released at the beginning of August last year, Post-Trash called it “a constantly shifting project that takes experimental lo-fi into brilliantly colored psych directions with a concise glow.” Then the pandemic took hold. With normal life at a standstill and unable to hang with his bandmates, Jason focused his energy on his daughter’s homeschooling schedule, and recording. He focused on finishing one song a day and was soon honing in on a brand new album. Essential Aliens takes all the elements of the Helvetia sound and simplifies. Basic progressions of fingerpicked shapes morph with repetition and end in head scratch. Drums distort and muted bass lines prop up acoustic guitars that were recorded blown out on a cassette four-track. Electric guitars are out of tune for effect and were recorded direct, almost painfully in your face.
The character of the recordings are informed with fuzz and intimate room sounds. Short blasts of stoner chill with no specific genre in mind, this is like forever rummaging through a radio dial looking for weird tunes. Most of the songs are about a period in Jason’s childhood when he lived in Basel, Switzerland, and believed that he lived with a ghost. A series of memories of unexplained happenings that ended as abruptly as they started. And the strange absence he encountered when they ceased. These are simple songs about keeping yourself from falling apart. To remind you that you can be strong. This is a weird blues.
