Alex Hentze - A Helpless Presence (2017)

Alex Hentze is a Guatemalan artist that has truly evolved over the years. Starting of as one of the country´s Progressive House prodigies Alex signed tracks at a very young age with multiple record labels. However copying a sound that wasn´t his own was not what he wanted. It didn´t took him long to find his own path that would later serve as an output for multiple projects such as FRAAEK, Now You Must Climb Alone, Hokusai Collective and Indigo Children among others. After 12 years in the making Alex releases his most personal material up to date.

“A Helpless Presence” is Alex Hentze´s third LP. The work is an allegory of a phase in his life with alternate states of depression and happiness and periods of strong hallucinations as a product of his emotional state at that time (2015-2016). It talks about feeling helpless with everything around you, and still find a place of wellbeing with yourself before anyone or anything else. This album is about finding virtue in all emotions through feeling, seeing and communicating differently in a society based on deceit. The sounds you hear and feel in this story combine a strong melodic texturized ambience which sets a nostalgic, at moments even dark but always hopeful atmosphere. Eventhough most tracks have a strong Electronica sound you can always find comfort on very organic elements that can also give a sense of the grassroots of Alex as a Guatemalan.
“For me music and arts are the best ways to understand my path and have my own world regardless of feeling helpless. Music is my scope to appreciate humanity and nature and to give something back to help build structures based on truth.”
This album has been worked with the Mutable Shruthi, Roland System-1 Roland TR-8, Juno-G, Cellos, Guitars, Moog Mother 32; and recordings of the acoustic instruments and a variety of sound textures of Guatemalan Composer and Musician Joaquin Orellana. All the material was recorded in a home studio in the beautiful city of Antigua Guatemala. The live show dives completely in emotion not only through the music but also a mix of analogue and digital visuals that complete the experience.