email: alphaleonis@alphaleonis.org
Planet Ceres Enterprises
4110 SE Hawthorne Blvd., #619
Portland, OR 97214-5246
Press
Photo (.jpg)
Bio
(.pdf)
Like many contemporary
art projects, Alpha Leonis began in a crowded college apartment, where
a young Atticus Reynard first began recording the melodic thoughts that
had previously been confined to his curious hominid cerebrum. These
first recordings, crude and primitive skeletons at best, were initially
intended only for personal use and evaluation, but gradually made their
way into the hands of a few close friends and family members who
encouraged Atticus to continue his new hobby. Over the next few years
amid a variety of internships, jobs, extended world travel, and
personal pursuits, Atticus slowly began amassing a collection of
recordings with only the distant intention of one day releasing an
album. Finally, in 2009, more than six years after those first,
primordial explorations into the world of recorded sounds, he decided
to fully commit himself to the idea of publicly releasing his work.
In developing the ideas
that comprise Shadows of Men, Atticus sought to create a world through
music that was revealed through its intimate details, with a literate
foundation of powerful imagery and metaphorical layering that would
continue to present new perspectives on each repeated listen. As he
experimented with different styles and textures, he gravitated toward a
sound that he imagined would vaguely represent the dystopian near
futures depicted in popular science fiction by blending elements of the
familiar with a retro, pre-digital age vision – as if creating an
operatic rock version of Blade Runner. As a result, spacey, swirling
synthesized sounds seamlessly coexist on the album along with acoustic
guitars and anthemic choruses that spiral toward a well-coordinated
illusion of universal sonic chaos and collapse.
The collection of songs
that comprised the basis for the Shadows of Men all started with the
opening track on the album, the aptly themed “Erasing Me”, originally
recorded in 2005. But it wasn't until 2008 that Atticus began to
compose the bulk of the album, and sifted through his collection of
demos and notes to rework earlier tracks like “Erasing Me”, “How to
Throw Knives” and “Lunar Lullaby”. In the summer of 2009, in a
sweltering garage just outside of Los Angeles, Atticus wrote a flurry
of new songs and gradually refined the specifics of the album before
moving up to Portland, Oregon where he completed it. He then founded a
record label, Planet Ceres Enterprises, and set out to find a group of
talented and impassioned musicians with whom to perform. Currently,
Alpha Leonis is playing their original brand of spacey indie rock
throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Alpha
Leonis
Etymology
(Simplified )
Alpha
Leonis
- Regulus - COR
LEONIS - King Richard - COR CONDITVM - La
cathdrale
de Rouen - "HIC
COR
CONDITVM EST RICARDI
ANGLORVM REGIS QVI COR LEONIS DICTUS OBIIT AN M C XC IX"