“A hyperdense meditation on the climate crisis embodied through the lens of the pandemic.”
(WNYC New Sounds)
About the Album
Releasing February 23, 2024 on New Amsterdam Records
Developed and recorded during the pandemic, from Grammy-winning producer and composer William Brittelle in collaboration with Metropolis Ensemble, Jenn Wasner, Holland Andrews, and Eliza Bagg.
Metropolis musicians — led by Grammy-nominated Andrew Cyr — Brad Balliett (bassoon), Ben Cassorla (guitars), Paul Wiancko (strings), Holland Andrews (vocals), and Immanuel Wilkins (saxophone) tracked the piece remotely with the guidance of mixing engineer Zach Hanson (yMusic, Bon Iver, The Staves, S. Carey). The work features the “satin vocals” (Pitchfork) of acclaimed singer Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes, Bon Iver) and Eliza Bagg (Lisel, Roomful of Teeth).
All sales proceeds from “Snow Dream” will go directly to New Amsterdam, a Brooklyn-based non-profit artist service organization.
“This project, birthed in the early days of the pandemic and executed in quarantine, functioned as an artistic lifeline during an extremely isolating stretch of time. For me, the project stands as a testament to the centrality and durability of making records for the modern musician, especially in the face of challenging circumstances.”
William Brittelle
In a flurry of activity in recent years, Metropolis and William Brittelle have collaborated on many projects, including Forbidden Colors, The Meta Simulacrum, and the album release of Spiritual America. He won a Grammy for producer of Roomful of Teeth’s 2023 album, Rough Magic.
Behind the scenes in Fort Tilden, NY where William Brittelle composed “Snow Dream” in 2020.
Project In-Depth
A companion piece to the 2023 Grammy-nominated “Psychedelics” for Roomful of Teeth (the two were written concurrently), “Snow Dream” presents Brittelle's collage-like compositional style at its most extreme and enveloping. Every gesture erupts out of the previous one in a constantly evolving fever dream filled with a swirl of vintage synths, pop vocals, saxes, guitars, noise, screams, and strings outlining a dreamlike, first person apocalyptic vision.
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Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: I. #ODeath
Alive in the Electric Snow Dream : II. Puking Rainbows
Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: III. This Fortress
Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: IV. Asphodel Meadows
Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: V. My Memorex
Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: VI. Pure Sacrifice
Alive in the Electric Snow Dream: VII. Los Angeles 2091
Dido's Lament (Revisited)
Dido's Lament (Revisited) - Single Edit
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Metropolis Ensemble
Andrew Cyr
Brad Balliett (distorted bassoon)
Ben Cassorla (guitars)
Voice: Jenn Wasner, Holland Andrews, Eliza Bagg
Paul Wiancko (strings)
Immanuel Wilkins (saxophone)
Synthesizers, percussion, and electronics: William Brittelle
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As a science fiction-obsessed child of the 1980's, William Brittelle has long found dystopian landscapes to be a source of fascination and mangled nostalgia. In 2017, on a whim, he visited Fort Tilden, an abandoned army base on the bleeding edge of Queens, and was immediately captivated. He shortly joined a local arts organization and was given access to a studio in one of the former barracks.
Though lacking heating and running water, the room gave Brittelle year-round access to the surrounding world of corroding munitions bunkers, vine covered hangars, and pristine beaches. On a frigid January seaside walk Brittelle happened upon a shipwreck, his prints in the sand and snow the only within sight, and began to imagine a backstory to the scene.
Over the following two years, Alive in the Electric Snow Dream emerged — a swirl of vintage synths, pop vocals, saxes, guitars, noise, screams, and strings outlining a dreamlike, first person apocalyptic vision. A mix of terror, wonder, adrenaline, and exhaustion, the piece, in eleven blistering minutes, explores a full range of psychedelic emotion.
The B-side of Snow Dream contains ‘Dido's Lament (Revisited)’, a feminist retelling of the Dido and Aeneas myth anchored by Henry Purcell's famous aria ‘When I am Laid in Earth’ (aka ‘Dido's Lament’).
Originally premiered by Wild Up and Zola Jesus in January 2019 on the Ecstatic Music Festival, the piece again features Jenn Wasner on vocals alongside stunning appearances by the fiercely talented Holland Andrews. Andrews threads in the original aria throughout the 10-minute epic, culminating in a stunning and brutally cathartic re-interpretation of Purcell's original. Metropolis again forms the ensemble, adding Brad Balliett on distorted bassoon.
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Mixing engineer Zach Hanson
Graphic designer Brock Lefferts
Recent Reviews
William Brittelle
William Brittelle is a Brooklyn-based, Grammy-winning producer and composer, producer and creator of hyper-text and multimedia. An avid collaborator, Brittelle has worked with a number of artists across multiple disciplines, including Roomful of Teeth, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce Dessner (The National), Son Lux, Oneohtrix Point Never, Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo (Sammus), Aditya Prakash, Shahzad Ismaily, Duran Duran, Wye Oak, David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), Kanye West, and the Seattle, Baltimore, Indianapolis, and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras, the Basel Sinfonietta, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His most recent full-length LP entitled Spiritual America featuring Wye Oak, the Metropolis Ensemble, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, was released by Nonesuch/New Amsterdam in 2019. His prior albums were profiled on NPR's All Things Considered and in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, MUSO, The Nation, and The New Yorker.
Brittelle's work has been presented at venues across the world, including the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Da Camera in Houston, Seattle's Town Hall, and the Ecstatic Music Festival in New York. Post-pandemic, his work has focused increasingly on complex collaborative networks of interlinked text and multimedia, a trend culminating in the launch of Eternal September, a vast digital alternate reality artistic platform being developed with the support of the Brown Arts Institute.
Increasingly active as a producer, upcoming and recent projects include albums with Alex Temple/Julia Holter/Spektral Quartet, Metropolis Ensemble/Wye Oak, composer Missy Mazzoli, vocalist/percussionist Jodie Landau, the string ensemble Owls, singer/composer Aditya Prakash, movement and voice ensemble Constellation Chor, and keyboardist Erika Dohi. Roomful of Teeth's 2023 album Rough Magic garnered Brittelle a Grammy award as producer (BEST SMALL ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE) and a Grammy nomination as composer (BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION). Along with composers Judd Greenstein and Sarah Kirkland Snider, Brittelle is the co-founder and co-artistic director of New Amsterdam Records and serves as house producer for Shahzad Ismaily’s Figureight Recordings in Brooklyn. More »
