Needles & Grooves AotM /// Vol. 62 - August 2024 /// Butcher Brown - Solar Music

NewsFedora

NewsFedora

Well-Known Member
BUTCHER BROWN - SOLAR MUSIC (2023)
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Bandcamp has a nice lil writeup about this album:
daily.bandcamp.com

Butcher Brown, “Solar Music”

On their new LP, the combo discovers new worlds at the intersection of jazz and hip-hop.
daily.bandcamp.com daily.bandcamp.com

Stream/buy it on Bandcamp here:

Also available directly from their website and probably other places too.


Butcher Brown is a band that is near and dear to my heart. Much of my life was spent growing up in Virginia and in the early 2000s I went to school at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. It's there that this kid who listened to almost nothing but Smashing Pumpkins and other depressing 90s alt rock discovered the joy and beauty of jazz and hip hop. And the former capital of the Confederacy has a thriving scene of both. I have many fond memories of going to Bogarts to listen to Devil's Workshop Big Band or Cary Street Cafe to catch Modern Groove Syndicate. And who could forget the Oregon Hill Funk All-Stars and Yo Mama's Brass Band amirite?

I'm no musician myself, but I learned to keep an open mind and appreciate new music. And there's no lacking of it in RVA.

I graduated in '04 and not long after moved to Florida where -- don't get me wrong there's some great music to be found -- it just wasn't the same for me. I kept in touch with my old jazz guitarist roommate (Scott Burton who features on my previous N&G AOTM) and tried to come up to visit whenever I could. Around 2009 or so he was telling me about a young up and comer named Devonne Harris, a jazz keyboardist who also spent his weekends making Madlib and Dilla-inspired beat tapes under the moniker DJ Harrison. He was starting a new jazz band called Butcher Brown that wore its fusion roots on its sleeve but also dabbled in other like-minded genres like hip hop and R&B.

I made a point to see them live during a visit and was blown away by how tight the band was. It sounded like they'd been around for decades, and the fun variety of songs got heads bobbing and booties shaking.

An early album of theirs, Grown Folk, sounded like one of DJ Harrison's beat tapes. It was around this time they had a bit of a shake-up in the lineup, bringing in guitarist Morgan Burrs and Marcus Tenney on trumpet/sax. It was also around this time Questlove got wind of Devonne's hip hop production and called him out to LA. When Questlove calls, you answer and not too long afterward, Devonne was signed to Stones Throw for his DJ Harrison projects. His latest album was an AOTM contender.

Butcher Brown, meanwhile, bounced around a bit from label to label (and also self-released the incredible afro-beat AfroKuti: A Tribute to Fela that I wish saw wider release because then that could have seriously been my AOTM) while touring extensively both in the States and over in Europe. They eventually landed on Concord Records, where they've to date released a trio of albums. They continue to be diverse in their presentation, with horn player Tenney now regularly stepping up to the mic as rapper Tennishu.

So what is it about Butcher Brown? It's that in their music you can find everything under the sun.





Welcome back to another Needles & Grooves Album of the Month Thread. I am your host for this month, NewsFedora. We had lots of fun the last time I guided you on an AOTM thread which was... holy cow four years ago? Good lord, what is going on with the fabric of time. 😩

Err... anyways, things seemed to work out pretty swell last go-round, so I'll stick with my format from back then:

Me from four years ago said said:
I have a series of clues lined up that I will dole out once a day. After I run out of clues, I will reveal what the album is and if someone correctly guessed it.

This will also be a giveaway month! One lucky member will get a copy of this album free! Well, it still costs money, but I'm the one paying for it.

To enter into the giveaway:

-You get one entry for making a guess. You can guess multiple times, but only get one entry total for this.
-You get a second entry if you guess the artist but miss on the album
-You get a third entry if you're the first to guess the AOTM!
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I'm still putting together hints but let's just go ahead and make the deadline to submit guesses/figure it out be July 14. I don't think I'll have that many clues to drop but we'll see how it goes.

First clue will drop on Monday but if you're feeling it, go ahead and start guessing now! See if you can ruin my thread without the benefit of a single clue! It'll be funny! Ha ha ha! Yes!
 

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Post 2 for guesses/clues/and all the usual hustle 'n bustle

Guesses:
Puscifer - Existential Reckoning @avecigrec
Vivaldi's Four Seasons In Jazz @MyWifeHatesTrain
Max Richter - Vivaldi The Four Seasons Recomposed @Skalap
Max Richter - The New Four Seasons Vivaldi Recomposed @MyWifeHatesTrain
Peanut Butter Wolf - My Vinyl Weighs a Ton @avecigrec
D.I.T.C. - The Official Version @avecigrec
Eamon - No Matter The Season @panino
Group Home - Livin' Proof @MyWifeHatesTrain
Madlib - Medicine Show #5 The History of the Loop Digga @avecigrec
Damu the Fudgemunk - Conversation Peace @avecigrec
Orbital - Orbital @Hemotep
Imagine Dragons - Night Visions @cul8er
Sam Brown - The Wait @MyWifeHatesTrain
Butcher Brown - Solar Music @avecigrec

Hints:


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A recycled clue from my first AOTM thread:
NewsFedora said:
Vinyl collecting isn't my only hobby. I grew up playing video games and while I still play modern consoles, I continue to have a nostalgic fondness for the 16-bit era of gaming, the Super NES in particular.

I've also been part of the emulation/rom hacking scene for over 20 years. I won't go into THAT MUCH detail about what that is, but basically there's been a long-standing group of folks who make fan-made changes to existing video games. It can be something as simple as replacing Mario in Super Mario Bros. with a poorly pixilated Trent Reznor and calling it Super NIN Bros. Or it can be translating an entire game into a different language, like translating the Japanese-only Mother 3 role playing game into English.

Speaking of Mother 3, let's talk about its Super NES prequel Mother 2, which you may know by its English name: EarthBound. It was a truly unique Japanese RPG when it was released in the mid-1990s. Instead of being set in a fantasy land where you fight dragons and save the world from supernatural forces of evil, EarthBound takes place in contemporary America where you fight skateboarding punks and hippies, and... ok you still end up saving the world from a supernatural force of evil.

The EarthBound/Mother series has a loving fanbase, which I count myself among. One thing I adored was its score, composed by Keiichi Suzuki, Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka, and Hiroshi Kanazu, who gave the game an eclectic soundtrack that borrowed (and sampled!) many different genres. It's great and it has indeed been issued on vinyl thanks to Ship to Shore Phono Co!

The EarthBound soundtrack is not my Album of the Month, but I certainly recommend it if you find a copy at a decent price! No, let's go back to my rom hacking resume. While I love the original music, I always wondered how the game would be if it had an instrumental hip hop soundtrack.

So exactly two years ago this month I released a rom hack of EarthBound that replaces its soundtrack with (mostly) hip hop beats. These are real songs by real artists; I see it almost like a mixtape of sorts. Some of the music is classic, well-known stuff. Other songs are super random and obscure. Here's a video showing the first 20 minutes or so of the game to give you the gist of it:



Is this month's artist featured within this rom hack?????? Am I shilling my own vanity project????? Hell yeah I am.

Download the patch and music files here You're on your own finding the original EarthBound rom, though (hint: look for "no-intro" on Archive.org). This also only works on modern emulators like bsnes or recent versions of Snes9x so don't bother with Zsnes (which you really should have gotten rid of about 10-15 years ago anyways). It also plays great on a real SNES if you have the sd2snes/FX Pak flash cart. Feel free to ask questions here if you need help setting it all up.

The weekend is about to begin, so let's play some video games!
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MyWifeHatesTrain said:
What decade was the record released?
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It feels a bit too soon to narrow things down by that much, but I'll say it was after George W. Bush left the White House.

Hemotep said:
Does the pressing sound as good as or superior to the album on streaming?
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯

MyWifeHatesTrain said:
Do you not know because you don’t have the vinyl, have never streamed the album, or do not believe your ears are good enough to know?
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Mostly the last part and I've never done an A/B comparison or anything like that. Or to be more helpful, this is not some kind of Tone Poet-ish audiophile release. It still might sound better than your streaming service of choice, but I don't feel my middle aged ears should be the definitive authority in making that declaration.

It's been a minute since I actually put it on my turntable, now that you brought it up. I should fix that.

UPDATE FROM AFTER I SPUN THE ALBUM AGAIN: You know what I take back what I said earlier, this album fucks on vinyl. I forgot that it's [REDACTED]



Hey remember when I just dropped this random video in the OP? That was really random, wasn't it? Could it be a clue? Well... sort of. It's more half a clue than a full clue.

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At least one of these bumper stickers is relevant. Maybe more, there's a lot going on here. 😗

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July 1st! It's summer (up here in the northern hemisphere at least) which often means there's a bop that all the kids are vibing to being heralded as the "song of summer".

And we all know what this year's song of summer is, right? The one that everyone's dancing to, the one uniting crips and bloods alike, coming from a true poet! This song needs no further introduction!

 
NewsFedora said:
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That's not a hint, that's just me seeing the complete lack of interest in my thread. 😓
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I mean I’m here! I don’t have a guess. I can also tell you the forums in general feel slow this weeks. I imagine it’s because holiday week. Lots of other stuff going on. I imagine once you have a couple of clues up and people aren’t trying to blow themselves up, it’ll hop a bit.
 
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