TR/ST's Robert Alfons, by Brent Goldsmith
TR/ST is the musical project of producer, singer, and artist Robert Alfons. Weaving an entirely unique sonic tapestry, Alfons has been captivating audiences with his dynamic vocals, emotive lyrics, and late night sensuality for over a decade now.
Pre-order on Dais-exclusive Yellow-in-Clear vinyl, limited to 500 copies.
Today he’s released new single “All at Once” along with the announcement of his next studio album, Performance, due September 13 via Dais, his first full-length for the label. Performance sinks even further into the nasty synth-pop psychodrama that Alfons has pioneered and, finally, perfected across his evolution.
Recorded in Los Angeles, the songs seethe with dread, lust, reckoning, and abandon, backlit by the light pollution of a thousand dead end city streets. Alfons co-produced the collection with versatile composer and producer Nightfeelings, achieving a thick, smoky balance of eerie synths, fog machine low end, and bruised, crooning voice.
The title alludes to a friend’s offhand remark about Alfons’ intrinsically performative nature. The music moves between beauty and bitterness, anthem and anguish, the sound of melancholia gone massive. Track after track, Alfons wields pop dynamics and brooding production wizardry like a weapon, spiraling through a roll call of hits. Throughout, there’s a sense of emotional turmoil elevated to strange heights, stained by guilt and ghosts and the memory of those wronged and those still unforgiven.
As a world unto itself, Performance is persuasive, immersive, and intoxicating, at the threshold of stirring and disturbing. Alfons’ voice is the anchor in the storm, singing a collage of impressions and confessions with a smeared, stream of consciousness logic. He’s both observer and instigator, performer and playwright, liberated by the stage and the night.