Alpha Lighting System
Having won over UK audiences, it would appear that the Mexican quartet have found a home away from home.
For a band whose music reaches toward the cosmos, Mexican quartet Alpha Lighting System recently arrived in the UK with their feet planted firmly on the stage – and to ears wide open. Crucially, their appearance at Fusion Festival was something of a revelation. “It was an amazing response and I was very happy,” says frontman Alam Hernández. “We were received with such warmth.” That welcome, they say, came not from polite applause but from genuine engagement – something drummer Juan Gabriel Hernández is quick to stress. “We were met with an audience that was really open to what was happening on stage. People were actually listening to the music. That was fantastic!”
Listening is key when it comes to Alpha Lighting System. Their sound – a mix of prog, jazz-fusion, Latin rhythms and metallic crunch – is less about easy hooks and more about immersion. “It’s been a process of managing those distinct and different influences,” explains Alam Hernández. “Sometimes I’ll have material that is very jazzy and bassist Jorge 'Jaco' Jácome will have something that is raw and dark and then we try to find a meeting place in the middle.” This push-and-pull dynamic gives them their strength.
Guitarist Joshua San Martín sees that balance as both challenge and evolution. “On the longer songs, there’s definitely a balance between musical complexity and melodic accessibility,” he says, before adding, “We learned to compress our complex ideas into a short amount of time by making some of the songs three-and-a-half minutes instead of 15. But they still feel like 15-minute songs.”
Lyrically and conceptually, Alpha Lighting System move in an expansive territories. “I’m always reading about physics and space,” Alam Hernández notes. “These can be very dense topics but we try to make them accessible so our audiences can relate to the songs. Now that we’re older, we’re crafting our material better.”
Fusion, however, offered something unexpected: affirmation. “It exceeded our expectations in every way,” says San Martín. “It made us think about finding our crowd and our people.”
Having taken a break to work on and learn from external solo projects, the band are keen to crack on. “The next step is to get into a room and jam all these experiences out. That excites us a lot.”
- Julian Marszalek