thisdaysoundlike

Codek - Tim Toum

:Brownstudy, real name: Jason Hogans, comes with an adventurous style and musicality that has caught the attention of DJs and tastemakers worldwide. 

Hogans’ first impacted through Detroit’s electronic music scene, impressively debuting on Carl Craig's Planet E in ’98 with an EP called Peter And The Rooster. But his most enticing identity came after his experimentations with folk, cut & paste, minimal, punk, ambient, glitch, soul, reggae/dub, jazz, hip hop and prog-whatever. Debut album Tell Me More About Bubbles in 2005 under the new moniker :Brownstudy came out on Guy McCreery's Third Ear label. Jason returns to Third Ear for this next LP, Life Well Lived, with 11 tracks that further showcase his polyrhythmic and experimental electronica. 

:Brownstudy (don't ignore the :colon) covers all styles in trying to convey what he wants to say. "I've been doing music in some way since elementary school” says Hogans. “Violin, trumpet, piano/keys, electronics, percussion, vocals, etc. Some formal training (classical theory, jazz theory, jazz improv, sight singing/ear training, creative writing), but ultimately relying on my ear & heart.”

The record features some truly nonsecular sounds, steeped in impressive analog blends. His masterful and quirky thesis in beat programming particularly notarises instrumental tracks such as ‘Wax Suckas (Decline)’, ‘Dead Doldrums’ and ‘Red Dreaded Stepchild’, in a way that the most seasoned beatmakers  like Cut Chemist, Mr Scruff and Luke Vibert can beguile. With an extra smattering of Herbie Hancock-esque progression, charm and soul, it all adds up to an impossibly endearing album. An album with a social conscience at its heart, but never veering into soapbox lecturing.

Never one to avoid an issue or confront a taboo Hogans has carved an album that puts him at the forefront of rappers with real lyrical ambition. Yes, his beats and grooves are original, and his sounds are unusual, but ultimately it’s his words and his delivery that marks :Brownstudy out. He spouts potently intelligent and honourable lyrics in tracks like the title ‘Life Well Lived’, and ‘Towards Improvement’ where the lyrics are further maintained by a bed of indolent vocal loops. For more impact, a sprinkling menace is called upon in his words, but staying true to his playful character it works to display his facetious and cheeky streak perfectly. Tracks like ‘Bitchslappin’ Motherfuckas To Hell’ and ‘Glorious Future’ are where the record really harks to the warmly mischievous traits of hip-hop, just like A Tribe Called Quest, Run DMC and De La Soul. But nobody tells it how it is and how it should be quite like :Brownstudy. 

"I'm spanking protocol" he says. “I still act like an 18-year-old and pass it off as eccentricity,” coos Jason. “I’m proud of that. Life’s too short to posture like you’re dignified. Nobody’s anything but carbon, water and a set of circumstances.”

Eloquent and self deprecating, shot through with insight and humour. Charismatic and critical. And self critical. There isn’t much to dislike about :Brownstudy and Jason Hogans, and he is clearly onto something in the pursuit to lead a Life Well Lived.


Life Well Lived

8 Third Ear Recordings BROWNSTUDY Glorious Future

Tranche - Novacom

DBA021 MR. BEATNICK - FORMED IN THE STANCE

Buy on Bandcamp!

SidiRum & Barda - Movimiento

“You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.” 

― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Features the original mix + David Last's remix. 

Originally released on Dope Recordings, Sad Livin' In The City is a deep house journey through love and the apocalypse. The vinyl release comes courtesy of Black Feather and Communikey and was a Kickstarter gift for backing the Communikey Festival. We have come into an incredibly limited supply of these records, stamped our shit all over it and are offering them to you the people who probably have wanted a copy of this record. 

Included with the purchase is the original full length digital release with all remixes. The vinyl consists of the Time for Trees original and David Last's amazing funk pop remix. 

Includes unlimited streaming of Sad Livin' In The City (Digital EP) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Bandcamp

Time for Trees feat. Layden Bryant - Sad Livin' In The City

The book on PBR Streetgang has barely even been started and yet it's already become a must-read tome on every last desk here at R$N Towers - even the kitchen staff haven't been able to put it down. Of course, there's no physical book to behold but rather a selection of aural fancies that go down sweeter than anything Mr Kipling has ever made.

However, there's a rumbling near our dungeons and it seems as though Tuff City Kids (Gerd Janson and Lauer) have broken free of our chains, rampaged all over the place and have written their names over the PBR Streetgang book so many times that it could even be considered modern art. Actually, it looks like it's probably even more valuable now. We're going to have to start blaring this out on the foghorn.

You're going to love this.

PREMIERE: PBR Streetgang - Return To Page One (Tuff City Kids Electro Mix) - (2020Vision)

LV - Ancient Mechanisms 
BWOOD0143CD/LP/DD

‘Ancient Mechanisms’ is the fourth album by globetrotting London production duo LV. It traces a train of thought that was sparked by a live session with Tigran Hamasyan back in 2012: two and a half years down the line and a trip to Belgium later, the finished record is as much about the workings of musical artefacts as it is about putting the virtuoso pianist into new contexts.  

The duo, made up of Simon Williams and Will Horrocks, found the insides and mechanisms (hint) of the instruments they were working with to be of increasing interest as the project developed. They found a discarded, portable piano in the former’s new flat and spent hours painstakingly recording its notes, creaks and noises. This left them in possession of a MIDI keyboard that sounded like something from “a bar in a wild west movie” and featured heavily on the album. ‘Ruiselede’ makes reference to the town whose piano museum in which they were able to record Hamasyan playing on its collection of antique grand pianos.

LV have always thrived by working with new collaborators and environments. In the past there’s been joint efforts with London poet Josh Idehen and journeys to South Africa for kwaito-infused productions with Johannesburg MCs. It was from working with Hamasyan that their attention began to shift to the piano itself. “We got into the sound that instruments make themselves, not just the production of the sound,” says Williams, “We got into the actual sound of keys being hit.”

Anyone who heard the Maida Vale session that laid the foundations for the album will know how exciting it was to hear delicate jazz musicality at play with UK-tinged dance rhythms. ‘Jump and Reach’ builds on that potential, with circling piano going toe to toe with rolling drums and stabs of bass. But Hamasyan wasn’t just providing pretty riffs for them to work with, he also fed into the process of how they worked. As Horrocks says, “His musical interests are much more broad than perhaps people would expect,” something that’s on show in ‘Infinite Spring’ where his penchant for looping pedals has produced a wash of sound easy to fall adrift in.

The exploration of what lay inside the instruments in front of them is the thread holding this unique record together: strands ranging from foreign surroundings to the darker corners of London’s club lineage are channelled into exploring that idea. There are field recordings of Belgium’s streets along with snare hits in ‘Transition’ that nod to the studio where a nascent dubstep’s sparse aesthetic was born. As an album, it draws together disparate interests in a way that feels compellingly coherent. 

“Ancient Mechanisms” is released 9th October on Brownswood Recordings

Buy Album

LV - Transition

Lately Maybe by @shy-wolve is featured on SVMMΞR SVN vol. 3 and available for free download at svnsetwaves.bandcamp.com along with 33 other exclusive tracks.

Art by Ed Bidgood!

Download Album

SHYWOLVE - Lately Maybe

free

Cissi Moon changed my life! It was in a now refurbished part of Stockholm in a futuristic cafe/club called Holger that i had my first encounter with loudly played club music. The night was called dB and we lined up with our fake IDs every Saturday to hear Cissi Moon spin Drum & Bass records and let the bass engulf our beings.

At the time the art of making electronic music was totally alien to me, I could not for the life of me work out how to ever make music that carried the same emotional and physical impact as I felt on that dance floor .
I have spent the last 17 years or so trying to get back to that state of being at one and completely lost with the music. 

This record concludes a trilogy of EPs by Peder Mannerfelt on his eponymously named label. What comes next is everything and beyond.

http://www.decks.de/t/peder_mannerfelt-pm003/c5n-sm

The Limits of Control

Music composed and performed by Iván Ceja

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