After my James Braun review, I thought I’d take it upon myself to review another similar release that I’ve been playing a considerate amount the last couple of weeks. Yes, it may have been out for a while but I tend to want to strive away from the ‘a 6 week track is old’ ‘getting old before it’s even released’ and ‘meeting-the-hype’ tags thats are stamped upon a lot of records these days. Seems like patience really is a virtue in the music scene these days.
The record I want to talk about fortunately doesn’t fall into any of those categories. No big hype, will still seem fresh despite being out for a couple of weeks and was a pretty under the radar release from what I can gather. The EP titled ‘hello ammmerika” is by a German producer called Benjamin Brunn who has been steadily carving and producing a mixture of deep atmosperic records since 1995. In terms of output the man has a number of releases on labels such as Ware, BineMusic Workshop and Smallville, the release on the latter proving the most successful and admired, working with Move D to create a captivating and full length album ‘Songs From The Beehive’ that scored a full 5/5 on Resident Advisor. For those who regularly read reviews on RA often, you know these come once in a blue moon.
As a structural engineer by day it makes sense that Brunn’s music is approached with a great fascination to outboard gear and from an interview I read up on the other day it seems the Clavia Nord Modular is an easy way into the mans heart. I highly recommend giving it a read for all the producer fanatico readers we may have. The EP opens with ‘Stay Hungry Stay Foolish’ a 120 BPM pure house jam. 10 minutes of pulsating grooves, deep modular action and Chicago house influenced drums. Following up with ‘No Kicks’ which I’d say is my favourite release of the EP, Bruun bravely ditches all signs of a kick drum taking the track forward with a vocal speech from Diamondancer, focusing on the aspects of ‘no’. Apparently, these vocals weren’t originally planned and only took form when Third Ear couldn’t clear a sample of Chuck D which Brunn had previously used. I’d like to say this was probably for the better as I love the vocals on this one but a Chuck D sample could have bare great fruits too. It might be a difficult one to say toss in a set but I see this as a great opener.
The other two tracks work on similar grounds to the first track. Title track ‘Hello Ammmerika’ I’d go as saying is the slightly more dance floor friendly track of the EP and more aimed at a more peak time hour. It’s pretty much go from the start with the main synth line constantly driving throughout. Last on the EP is ‘Acidic Sun’ and the track I’d most likely throw in set myself out of all four. The title name kind of gives the nature of the track away. A gorgeous mixture of a chic 303 and long winded psychedelic pads make this the perfect track for a warm up slot. I can also not stress enough that you don’t listen to these over laptop speakers as it really won’t do them justice. As a whole the EP doesn’t reach the dizzy standards of ‘Songs From The Beehive’ but it’s still a great set of tracks that should prove themselves useful in different occasions. You can stream Acidic Sun and No Kicks below and get the whole release over on Boomkat.
Stream: [wpaudio url=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13411878/No%20Kicks.mp3″ text=”BENJAMIN BRUNN – NO KICKS” dl=”0″]
Stream: [wpaudio url=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13411878/Acidic%20Sun.mp3″ text=”BENJAMIN BRUNN – ACIDIC SUN” dl=”0″]
