{"title":"Speaker Music","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"of-desire-longing","title":"Of Desire, Longing","description":"\u003cp\u003eDeForrest Brown Jr. is an outspoken theorist, journalist, curator, visual artist and musician. Raised in the deep South, DeForrest moved to New York a few years ago and has been shaking things up IRL and online ever since. He asks difficult questions that make us relook at how we think about race, class, post-racial ideas, historical events and the social structures in America. His work defies narrow bags and he’s truly a unique cultural polygot comfortable booking an artist like Felicia Atkinson at Issue Project Room or shaking up people on the street with his “Make Techno Black Again” hat line. His project Speaker Music was inspired by Rhythmanalysis, a book of essays by urbanist philosopher Henri Lefebvre as well as considerations of momentum and the “chronopolitical” from British cultural theorist Kodwo Eshun. Mobilizing freely improvised electronic percussion and stereophonic audio recordings, Speaker Music yearns to caress, engineer and sculpt sentiment into a multi-textural rhythmic body, quivering moments into a collapsed “nonpulsed time.” \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis debut for Planet Mu centers around weary sonic portraiture of sonorous and cybernetic energy music – a music encoded with an encrypted heat but made “with empathy and without excess.” His “touching of frequencies” unveils a romantic abstraction of sonic narratives that recalls previous innovations by musicians such as Les McCann, Urban Tribe and James Stinson. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Planet Mu","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50405029085515,"sku":"1078259","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a472b71f-89c2-4146-88da-30521450a56d_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726573203"},{"product_id":"techxodus","title":"Techxodus","description":"\u003cp\u003eDeForrest Brown Jr., the writer and producer behind Speaker Music, describes Techxodus as \"abstracting Blackness through information overload\". On the album he explores the intersection of tech, Blackness and resistance via music taken from his archived live shows, which are then edited, ordered and reassembled in the studio. The main line of inquiry that feeds into Techxodus is Drexciya, whose myths have informed much recent afrofuturist creativity. DeForrest researches and reimagines the artifacts and stories of Drexciya with new maps, ideas and music, particularly reflecting on the 'Seven Storms', seven albums that came out in quick succession around the death of Drexciya member James Stinson, which seemed to herald Drexciyans in the attack mode. The artwork by Abu Qadim Haqq, who also created artwork for Drexciya, links the work too, with Deforrest re-orienting charts and timelines familiar from Drexciyan mythology, working up clues to all possible environments where Drexciyans could survive, from the depths of the Atlantic, to oceanic islands or even outer space. Like Sun-Ra, another touchstone of Afrofuturist music, it might be that the Drexciyans wanted to leave the planet they hated. With these elements, DeForrest creates a soundtrack for an alternate history, a sort of sci-fi sonic fiction which threads together the sonic warfare and mythos of the Drexciyan records with ideas and references to Ishmael Reed's 'Mumbo Jumbo', which tracks the story of 'Jes Grew', an audio virus, back to the coastal black cities of Alabama and the American South.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Musically the album is as intense as its inspirations. DeForrest skilfully hand-plays rhythms which amalgamate trap and jazz drumming, but feel at times like orca-song as they pulse through the thick waves of digital sound. Equally the music evokes the ocean, with deep cold drones, or as if it's floating through time like in 'Holosonic Rebellion' which mixes in recordings of African Warriors. Sometimes there is an energetic turbulence as on 'Jes Grew', where punched-in passages of jazz brass bounce against DeForrest's drums to create a weird disassembled jazz. Towards the end the album begins to feel like a spaceship taking off, the rushes of ascending noise and distortion, distant Southern Gospel Vocals feel like music that's leaving earth. Listen to it without the references or feed your imagination; this is a powerful and immersive original work from one of electronic music's most unique creators\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Planet Mu","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50405213569355,"sku":"2049556","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/speaker_music_techxodus_ZIQ457_54d0340b_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726574568"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/speaker-music.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}