Heathered Pearls is Polish-born, Michigan-raised, New York-based artist and producer Jakub Alexander, whose music career was deeply rooted before ever releasing his own. Curator for Tycho’s ISO50 blog, co-founder of the Moodgadget label, and former A&R at Ghostly International, Alexander has been entrenched in the industry since 2002. He was first introduced to the power of ambient music by his mother at an early age, discovered techno as a teenager living in the Detroit area, and gradually learned to create his own vision of the genres.

Since his 2012 debut as Heathered Pearls, Alexander has constructed art — music, objects, installations, performances — as a way of re-imagining fragments of his past and mapping ideas for his future. He sees imagery and narrative framework as fluid components to his craft. Alexander’s first album, Loyal, mimicked the hypnotic motions of ocean waves at night, offering melodic, loop-based ambient music as a tribute to the tasteful influence of his mother and aunt. The second Heathered Pearls album, Body Complex, found inspiration from comfort, imperfection, and visions of interior architecture, transforming Loyal‘s soft textures into driving 4/4 figures, glacial tone drifts, and starry synth plateaus. His 2017 EP, Detroit, MI 1997 – 2001, reflected on a formative era through ephemeral dance music. The third Heathered Pearls full-length, Cast, returns to moodier loop formats joined by the distinctly new presence of the spoken word. The move mirrors the multitudes of its namesake: collaborators comprise a cast, healing in the bind of a cast, complex emotions and the shadows they cast.