Andrew Veeder on January 16th, 2015

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Alge, pronounced “algae,” is a new one-man project from producer, singer and songwriter Jon Weinman, now based in Los Angeles. He recently relocated from Brooklyn after completing the Clive Davis Program for Recorded Music at NYU, and subsequently playing and producing with his band Sioux Lion, as well as producing and writing for other artists, including Anais Aida and Dylan Reynolds. Alge began as Weinman’s way to concoct “iced out” pop songs, influenced by both folk music and hip-hop while sounding more like ghostly alt-R&B than either of those. His debut track “The Spirit of St. Louis” is atmospheric and emotive, minimally layered with humming synth textures and tinny percussion that swell with a sorrowful tone. Weinman’s airy and captivating vocals hover in the mix, angelic at times and brooding at others, with the lyrics, “Following The Spirit of St. Louis / We still got our hopes and dreams / If we tore ourselves apart, are there angels in the seams / Or just the devils of our darkest dreams,” and, “Biggest story since the resurrection / Our crime of the century / If we cut the signal off, would we find out what we need / Or lose ourselves inside a reverie.” With only the lone track out now but much more music in the works, this single-celled act will continue spawning into a complex multi-cellular project as the year goes on, as its namesake would suggest.

||| Stream: “The Spirit of St. Louis”

||| Also: Check out the video for “The Spirit of St. Louis” below, filmed on Dec. 4 in NYC during protests in response to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner: