Sam Brown
Little L Records forever brings music full of mind opening surprises. Take the recent album Wheel of Fortune from UNC Chapel Hill composition grad Sam Brown who delivers a wild cycle that follows up his LLR debut Yellow Cake. The ambient electronic is executed as an ambitious double album work designed to be played everywhere in all of your surrounding living spaces & places.
The electro odyssey begins with a spin on “Untitled”, then the beat & synth buzz of “23”, the dark hues slow ghosting “Black Is The Colour”, to moving on up with “Feeling Good”, or back down to the subterranean feels of “Light Work”. International hip hop productions play out on “Heart To Starboard” feat. Fourth Shift, to the illuminating arts of “Magic”, then the supercharged club hedonism goth beat of “H Is The Most Precious Letter”, the maternal lullaby of “Mother”, the tedious kraut electro math beat of “Paraphonix”, right before horns & synths engulf you on “We Don’t Need Anybody”. The ballet continues on “Used To Dance”, to the day by day tilt-a-whirl of “Everyday”, igniting bass line instincts with “Firebird” & “Bass”, the zany & snazzy weird “Love, Pt II”, the digital pier popping “Fishin'”, dance hall hurtling “We Are Not Your Friends”, the bubbling insult to injury of “Knife To The Wound”, the infatuated & cascading “Love, Pt III (Neon Soul)”, future battle beats on “Tunnel”, atmospheric loops on “Heer”, deep electro dishes that get “Thick”, or the Halloween time creep & crawl of “77”.
“Silver and Gold” takes you to tense dimensions, then the subliminal dark dancing “06 06 16”, with the eastern echoing robo-respite of “Fujiyama”, driving ahead on the long & winding “The Road”, to the delirium tremens of “The Absinthe Fairy With The Auburn Hair”. Drives in the city are emulated on the ear catching “Division Street”, that cruises into “100”, to the gold shimmering emporium of the ancients that is the title track “Wheel of Fortune”, that shines into the neon new-romanticism of “Space” that closes out the album’s impressive 34 track run. Sam Brown provided the following exclusive candid exposition & introduction on what the experience of making Wheel of Fortune was like for him:
Wheel of Fortune deals with many people I have met in my life and the notions of fate and morality in the modern age. It deals with meditation, near-death experiences, finding the god within oneself, and how one can determine the course of their life and experiences. It is about embracing love and coping with sorrow. I navigated a new creative process to be entirely spontaneous and unfiltered, and improvised for much of the material. I wanted to not be stuck in one genre or idea; I feel now more than ever we live in a world where anything is accessible and one can make whatever music they want to with limited resources.
I spent the better part of two years on WoF. I was homeless for a while working on it. I got fucked over by a landlord in the city; I got robbed. I’ve seen some shit. I’ve been to some of the worst places on earth. I’ve been poor most of my life. I met some junkies. People threatened to kill me. I got stuck in the hospital in Varanasi, almost dying there. I slept in a playground for a few nights. I made beats in the woods and in libraries that I’d get kicked out of for having my headphones on too loud. I got really fed up with myself creatively at times. I worked my way through a terrible depression on it. I fell in and and out of love working on it. I explored new creative techniques. I listened to more music and absorbed more and worked with more people and grew. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I never stopped except when I absolutely had other stuff to deal with and never stopped trying to get better. I wrote music and lyrics every day, I tried new ideas, and I explored. I recorded people in Delhi, LA, NYC, and Durham. I recorded in hospitals, buses, planes, automobiles, trains, and people’s couches and floors. I found myself with no instruments so I recorded material with a laptop and used a QWERTY keyboard as I had used a piano keyboard before. I later added environmental and instrumental sounds and vocalists that I recorded with Ambisound microphones as well as some analog synths and traditional instruments. Some of the material was sent back and forth on phones and laptops.
Any success I have I owe to my hard work on this album as well as the others involved in this work and all the people in my life. Any true moments of inspiration came from hard life experiences. It is not nostalgic; it is close to my present life. The only real moment is the present one and that is what this album is about in a lot of ways—it is a personal therapy, which is why it has any measure of quality to it and why I enjoyed creating it. I’m still alive. I’m fighting for my art or I’m dying for my art.
Sam Brown’s new album Wheel of Fortune is available now from Little L Records.
