Sixteen tracks, most of them under three minutes, make up the first Scaled Alps album. The Los Angeles band released “Let the Alpine Play” on 20 July 2026 as a digital album on their own Blue Hell imprint, available on Bandcamp and on streaming services. Scaled Alps mix heavy rock, electronics and post-punk atmosphere under the low baritone voice of James Quentin Devine.

Devine sings, Anthony Percoco plays keys and guitars, Sean McCarthy plays drums and Steve Fishman plays upright and electric basses. Stewart Tuttle recorded the album at The Altar Studios in North Hollywood. The songs started as a set of self-recorded demos called “The Desertion Sessions”, cut in two sessions that ran through day and night and produced more than thirty tracks; sixteen of them were then re-recorded in the studio’s Big Room with Tuttle. On their Bandcamp page the band describe the result as “celestial, infernal crime spree music”.

Devine described the project and the way the record was made in an email to Side-Line: “JQD is a low-voiced singer moving between heavy rock, electronics, post-punk atmosphere and stranger pop; the voice remains the stable identity while the machinery changes. The record itself was made rapidly and largely without a click, leaving breath, strain, drift and imperfections audible.” He points to “Southerly” and “Celestial Sighs” as starting points.

‘Let the Alpine Play’ tracklist

The album runs “Another Clock Song (The 7th Unveiling)”, “Celestial Sighs”, “Southerly”, “Space/Time”, “Muffler (Chrome Viscera)”, “T.T.M.S. (Sunyata)”, “You Got H-O-R-S, You Want E Too?”, “Pink Diamonds”, “Neo Noir (Stelvio)”, “Selling It”, “Slow Motion”, “Impro (The Imp of the Perverse/The Pimp of the Inverse)”, “I Think We Met in Setagaya (Maybe it Was Seville)”, “Lemon Zest”, “Tentacoli” and “Throwaway Lines (Leo II)”. Only “Slow Motion” and “Lemon Zest” pass the three-minute mark; “Selling It” lasts 38 seconds. The band also publish an 18-page “Owner’s Manual” with the lyrics and the album’s visual material, and the full package of production WAVs and MP3s is offered as a free public download from the Blue Hell site.

About Scaled Alps

Scaled Alps is the band of Los Angeles singer and lyricist James Quentin Devine, who also records under his own name and as JQD, and of instrumentalist Anthony Percoco. The Scaled Alps name first appeared as a featured credit on Devine’s solo track “Cynical Ploy”, released on 5 May 2022, ahead of his solo releases “James Quentin Devine Plays the Saxophone For You” and “3-PIT” later that year. “Let the Alpine Play”, recorded at The Altar Studios in North Hollywood with Stewart Tuttle, Sean McCarthy and Steve Fishman, is the first full album under the Scaled Alps name and the first release on the band’s own Blue Hell imprint.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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