Description
Brussels band BRNS’ fourth album, Celluloid Swamp, is a mutant chamber pop
album with a smorgasbord of references spliced into sound only just recognisable
as a guitar band.
The four-piece sound like a band that is more overtly settled as
outsiders in a mainstream space. BRNS is more boldly aligned to the neo-dadaist
manifesto laid out as the parameters for the band when it started in 2010: music
free of inhibition; a space where anything goes. Whether it be in production:
blending parts from what were supposed to be different songs into the same
song. Or in genre: embracing R&B into their indie-rock DNA.
A lot of adventurous
ideas made it in the new LP.
The R&B-tinge of drummer/singer Timothée Philippe’s vocals is one of the most
radical aspects of the record since it’s something that most overtly breaks the
indie rock/pop mould they are most associated with. The Frank Ocean-esque
track ‘Suffer’, which is seethingly vengeful in its lyrical content, is one of the
tracks most evocative of this new trend.
But what’s clear is where one element in the band evokes mainstream timbres,
it’s never far from subversion. Keyboardist/bassist Antoine Meersseman, in
particular, is crafty at this. His taste for vintage outboard gear means the
poppiest moments - like ‘Money’ - become underpinned by beautiful, cosmic
outpourings of emotion that are ruggedly analog and atypical in pop.
The record was done in New York. Brooklyn’s Studio G and a residential recording
studio in the Catskills which has a Neve desk called Outlier Inn. And they were in
good hands with Grammy Award-winning engineer Alexis Berthelot, who had
produced Frank Ocean and Moses Sumney, at the controls. His gift to this record
says Diego Layer is the acoustic instruments retain prominence as a maelstrom of
electronic sound might have otherwise sunk them had Berthelot not guided it.
This is particularly true of the drums, which are underproduced in a way that
means the sound of the room makes it onto the record. It also revives the feeling
of seeing this extraordinary band, who have released what is undoubtedly their
most artful statement to date, live. And since BRNS have expanded their setlist
with some of the best band material ever, that remains an exciting prospect in
the weeks and months to come.
