Brownout on Kept Records

You know... if I don't get a little dose of completely left of center world/funk sounds from Electric Cowbell or extreme metal from Patac Records, I start to worry I'm going to just drown in a sea of animal named bands and grow an award winning beard. These singles are the perfect tiny dose of another world and before you know it, you can start to pick apart the more subtle, interesting layers under the surface...or at the very least not be such a narrow minded, bored with everything hipster. That led me to this single on Kept Records from Austin based eight piece, Brownout.

A-Side's "Flaximus", wastes no time laying down this massive groooooove complete with cowbell and heavy flanged electric booming kicks. That extensive brass section wailing, working both the main melody and that lower bassline, into an overwhelming serious groove psyche.Take that distorted bassline, reminiscent of those Beastie Boy instrumentals (RIP Yauch)... stuff like this can absolutely come back when done with this kind of force. Powerful stuff live I bet, you can hear the sheer numbers of people coming together running conga fills against this breakout crunchy fuzz bassline, shakers, tambourines, all kinds of high register percussion just blasting. Miles of layers. Somehow getting more forceful as this goes on.

"I won't lie", the B-Side track then slows things down to get into their soul, shakers fast down to slow, the rattlesnake baby. High sustained chorus slide work on the electric going straight for an imagined deep Lou Rawls or Issac Hayes vocal and then the horn busts funk this along with wah guitar wails. Is this going instrumental? The directions changing adeptly, there's a plucked string measure, heavy phasered spring reverb strums that bounce along forever. A backup chorus comes in with that conga flourish and this is channeling all kinds of great funk stuff. A ringing sci-fi glitch guitar pops in here and there using these obviously modern sounds placing it squarely into the future. A heavily compressed alien distortion solo is playing with lasers, a latin soul, '70s RNB disco it's all being thrown into the 2st century. Nice one.

Get this one from Kept Records