There is now a standard practice with music releases at the outset of summer when the releases suddenly start to disappear as if people will stop listening to music during summer, their vacations, or whatever. Then, usually, some music that does get released at that time seems to slip between cracks, even though it does deserve to be heard.
This just might be the fate that catches up with multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer Les Brown and his second album The Next One (with his first album bearing the title The First One). While the albums might have vanilla paper-like titles, the music certainly doesn’t.
Brown might be a self-taught musician but his take on experimental electronic music just might have that idiot-savant touch that brings a left-field, fresh take, on the music genre(s) that can turn jaded at times. After all, Brown himself explains his music as something that is “meant to be like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: ‘You never know what you’re going to hear.’ If one tune isn’t your favorite flavor, try a different one.”
It seems that Brown has thoroughly accumulated a vast range of music and sounds through his ‘education’ years and has come up with a set of compositions that range anywhere from Eno’s ambient experiments (‘Martini’) to Mouse on Mars- type beats (‘Picycle’) and world music samples that he would insert at some point (’Bhajan’).
What might seem senseless to some artists makes full sense for Brown, and luckily for him, all the eleven compositions here work seamlessly and effectively, coming up with an album that deserves detailed listening.
