JFund Awardee Brian Mark: Experience History As It Happens

JFund Awardee Brian Mark: Experience History As It Happens

“I guess you could say it has elements of film music,” Mark humbly quips about a few of his works. If he’d gone down the standard path of film composition, it might be his name flashing on the big screen after everyone’s left the theater. Even calling him a film composer is way off the mark. Instead, we’ve got his name behind pieces that have a tangible human component to them, be they an interview with someone who lives with a double lung transplant or a reimagining of history’s emotional weight. An artist’s artist, Brian Mark is an intelligent, modern composer who employs many media elements and does so with marked idiosyncrasy and depth.

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Gregg Kowalsky presents an ambient antidote to modern life on L'Orange L'Orange

Gregg Kowalsky presents an ambient antidote to modern life on L'Orange L'Orange

The seven tracks on L’Orange L’Orange are anything but human sounding. They take their cues from places where the dramatic mind can’t go. Need to take the edge off at the end of your day? Gregg Kowalsky is a fine replacement for a tumbler of bourbon.

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Rhythm, Melody, and Dissonance: Trevor Babb’s Guitar

Rhythm, Melody, and Dissonance: Trevor Babb’s Guitar

Close your eyes, turn out the lights, and listen to Trevor Babb’s “Septet.” Put enough research and complexity behind your music, and you can still appeal to the brain which often seeks only that which is immediately rewarding. Trevor Babb encompasses the best of both worlds, where the music is pleasant to the ears while remaining stimulating to the thinking mind. The universe Babb creates sucks you in, and you’ll have no problem staying with him until Warmth has said all it needs to say.

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Esmerine are impossibly heavy and pretty as they cast 2017 in a dramatic post-rock haze on Mechanics of Dominion

Esmerine are impossibly heavy and pretty as they cast 2017 in a dramatic post-rock haze on Mechanics of Dominion

No matter how mathematically and compositionally sound the record is, it’s still impossibly heavy and pretty, casting its drama in a thick haze of intermittent drums, neo-classical geekdom, and various other idioms of post rock. Mechanics of Dominion is too heady for its own good, but still holds ground as a wonderful combination of influences and post-genre style. It takes time for it to reveal itself, and it’s usually worth the investment.

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