Alif Tree - Forgotten Places

2024-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

Genre and Mood

Alif Tree made Forgotten Places for listening rather than dancing. It sits where downtempo meets nu-jazz: slow, soft-edged electronic production around a voice that clearly comes from another era, which is exactly where the nostalgia comes from.

Song Summary

The heart of the track is a sample of the jazz singer Shirley Horn. Alif Tree built the piece around her voice, mixing sampled and live sounds, and the artist’s own release notes stress how respectfully the sample is treated. The title fits the method: a fragment of an older recording is carried into a new room and heard again, slightly out of place, like something rediscovered.

Musical Breakdown

Intro: Setting the Scene

The track opens softly and leaves space. Nothing is in a hurry; the opening is there to prepare a frame for the voice.

Build-up: Introducing Rhythmic Elements

A gentle downbeat rhythm comes in underneath, giving the piece motion without turning it into a dance track.

Main Section: Melodic Journey

Shirley Horn’s sampled voice carries the main section. Her phrasing, slow and intimate, is the melody, and the production keeps out of its way.

Bridge: Textural Exploration

The middle of the track leans on texture and repetition rather than on new themes, letting the sampled phrases recur in their new setting.

Climax: Emotional Peak

There is no big release. The track keeps its calm and lets intensity come from accumulation rather than volume.

Outro: Gentle Fade

Elements fall away and the piece ends as quietly as it began.

Concepts in Focus

Forgotten Places is a clear, gentle example of sampling. The voice at its centre was not recorded for this track; it was taken from a Shirley Horn record and placed into a new arrangement, so a jazz singer’s phrasing becomes the raw material of a downtempo piece. Listen for how the production is built around the sample rather than on top of it.

The 2006 12-inch single on Compost Records is also a small lesson in the remix. Next to the original version it carried a remix by the Detroit producer Moodymann (Kenny Dixon Jr.), Alif Tree’s own “LA” mix, which moves the track towards a straight four-on-the-floor beat, and a remix by Felix Laband, who adds a subtle bassline and playful, twisted samples. One source, four readings: compare them to hear what a remixer keeps and what he replaces. The same idea of building on a jazz singer’s recorded voice runs through Nina Simone – Sinnerman (Felix Da Housecat’s Heavenly House Mix).

Artistic Context

Alif Tree is a Marseille-based sound engineer, producer and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, voice, keyboards, percussion) who set up his own studio at the end of 1999 and describes himself as a defender of acoustic sounds. His influences run from orchestral music to pop via jazz and world music, through trip-hop and instrumental hip-hop. Forgotten Places comes from the album French Cuisine (Compost Records, 2006), whose voices, according to Last.fm, include samples of Shirley Horn and Nina Simone.

Impact and Reception

French Cuisine reached the top ten albums of 2006 in the chart of Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide show on BBC radio, according to the artist’s own biography, and Forgotten Places was the track Compost chose to release as a single with remixes. The Moodymann remix gave it a second life among house DJs, while the original remains the version for late, quiet listening.

Sonic Playground - nu-jazz