Photo: Özge Cöne

Daniel Brandt, best know as the drumming force behind Brandt Brauer Frick, has announced details of his second solo album following last year’s outstanding Eternal Something. Entitled Channels, it arrives on October 12th through Erased Tapes. On the new album, Brandt tried to “capture the essence of minimalism whilst lending it to a more playful context,” explains the press release. Channels is informed by Brandt’s experience performing and recording Steve Reich’s Six Pianos in a six-piece, which influenced him to compose long meditations on the piano. The record’s “frenetic energy and shape-shifting identity was also born out of touring with his new band”, the blurb adds, “and a desire to translate both the sound and spiritual unity of their live shows in which musicians locked together to create an intriguing meld of expansive works”.

Brandt has let loose the wild and wonderful opening track ‘Flamingo’ and he has also made a video for it. He comments on it:

“The video for Flamingo is deliberately non performance – people sitting in a room and watching basically nothing, never really sure if anything is ever going to happen. It’s also a play on John Cage’s 4’33”, except in this instance there isn’t even a performer present”

Watch it now.

Last month we heard ‘Kale Me‘, the first single lifted from Daniel Brandt‘s upcoming debut album Eternal Something. Brandt, who normally dazzles us as one third of Brandt Brauer Frick on drumming duties, is teasing the album again with a new single, ‘Chaparral Mesa’ where he shines playing and building layers of guitars. Named after his time recording in California between Joshua Tree and Malibu, the track builds slowly before turning “into a sea of organized electronic chaos”, as the press release describes. Brandt himself explains:

“I recorded Chaparral Mesa a year ago while I was involved in a recording session for another album in Malibu. We had rented a very beautiful place overlooking hills and the sea and we had a nice basic setup to record in there with a few guitars and a moog synth. I started recording a lot of guitars on top of each other and somehow the song arranged itself. I didn’t really touch it and just went along with naturally had to happen within the song. Later I added the second part, the drum-heavy one. This one was based on a session I once had with my friend Bryan Philips from Chile when I was visiting him in La Serena. I took the basics from that session and added a lot of new drums later on when I was at a proper studio and then added that part to the new song. In the end Chaparral Mesa was the quickest made song on the album but has also become the longest.”

Watch out for the release of Eternal Something on March 24th via Erased Tapes. Now listen to ‘Chaparral Mesa’.

Daniel Brandt, better known as one third of Brandt Brauer Frick, is gearing up to release his debut solo album. Entitled Eternal Something, the 8-track instrumental record arrives on March 24th via Erased Tapes. Usually the man behind the drum kit, on Eternal Something Brandt played most of the instruments on the record, some of which learnt for the first time while recording. Brandt explains how the album came to life:

“The initial idea was to make a cymbal album. I wanted to surround myself with all types of cymbals. I locked myself into my father’s cabin in the woods for three days. That was the moment I realized it was not possible for me to make an album just with cymbals because other ideas and instruments imposed themselves on me. I had a clear sense of what I wanted to do now. The intention was to let the songs evolve by themselves and not edit too much, keep it raw and have an explosion-like energy to them. I wanted to create a different sound, songs that build up like dance tunes but don’t feel like club music at all. Traveling around in California for two months gave me the possibility to deeply get into this concept outside my normal environment. Robert Raths, who served as a great motivator throughout the whole process (I guess he had listened to the record more than I ever had) came up with the perfect order for the songs. This record is about failing to make the original plan happen, but then the discovery of something I couldn’t even think of before.”

It may seem like a long wait till March but we can already get a taste of what’s to come with the first single ‘Kale Me’.