Tag: Brijean Feelings

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Brijean Shares Breezy and Mischievous “Workin’ On It”

Brijean is an acclaimed indie pop project that features: 

  • Brijean Murphy, a Los Angeles-born percussionist, who can trace the origins of her music career to her childhood: Murphy’s father Patrick is a percussionist and engineer, who taught a young Brijean her first patterns on a pair of congas that she inherited from the late Trinidadian steel pan drum legend Vince Charles. As a percussionist, the younger Murphy initially made a name for herself as a highly-sought after touring musician with stints in the touring bands of Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls Poolside, and several others.  

  • Doug Stuart, a jazz and pop session multi-instrumentalist and producer, who has worked with JOVM mainstays Bells Atlas, Meerna, Luke Temple, Jay Stone and others. 

2019’s debut EP WALKIE TALKIE was written and recorded in marathon sessions at their intimate home studio, during breaks in Murphy’s then-very busy touring schedule. The EP found the duo quickly establishing a unique sound that meshed Murphy’s Latin jazz and soul upbringing with Murphy’s 70s disco and 90s house-inspired production, along with psych pop.

2021’s full-length debut, Feelings celebrated self-reflection while making sense of the worlds around and within through rhythm and lyricism. However, the months surrounding the album’s release rang extremely bittersweet with the sudden death of Murphy’s father and both of Stuart’s parents. In a haze of heartache and loss, the duo left the Bay Area to be near family, resettling in four cities in under two years.

Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and the tracks they had started writing, along with Angelo, Murphy’s 1981 Toyota Celica became their few constants. 2022’s Angelo EP, which derived its title from Murphy’s beloved car, processed loss, informed by the duo’s own losses and the desire to move and start over.

The acclaimed and accomplished duo’s highly anticipated sophomore full-length album Macro is slated for a July 12, 2024 release through Ghostly International. Reportedly seeing the duo at their most playful, the album’s material features the duo engaging different sides of themselves, confronting the gloriously weird paradox of being alive. They’ve leveled up to meet the complexities and harmonies of the human experience with what may arguably be their most dynamic songwriting to date. Colorful, collaborative, sophisticated and yet deeply fun, the album creates a world of macrocosm with characters moods and points of view rooted in the notion that no feeling is final — and the only way out is through.

The album’s song sequencing elicits an exploratory vibe with high-tempo peaks and breezy valleys in the psyche. The duo sees the record’s vast sonic spectrum in contrast to the expectations for their output — “we’re supposed to know the box that our art fits, in and then fully commit to it existing within that box,” Brijean’s Stuart says. Overall, the album is deeply anchored in the intention to just not just move through the ups and downs life presents you but to feel it all, and to know it intimately.

Macro‘s first single, “Working On It” is a funky and breezy, Larry Levan house-like bop anchored around a layered and strutting baseline and a loop of different percussion paired with twinkling keys serving as a lush and ebullient bed for Murphy’s mischievous crooning. The result is a song that finds the duo at arguably their most playfully light, with the song seeing Murphy riffing on self-improvement, the insomniac’s desire to finally get some sleep and life in the seeming end times in a way that’s halfway serious.

The song started as al living room jam then as Murphy explains, “Doug played the two-layered basslines over a loop of bongos, congas an a dream machine and the rest felt like it happened in a dream.” Later Murphy asked fans to send voice memos in exchange for art, and some of those got peppered into the sound-bed. “That was a treat… Just getting to go through and hear all of these voices from around the world, an intimate and charming experience.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Brijean Takes Viewers on a Trip Through the Cosmos in Visual for Breezy “Take A Trip”

Brijean is an acclaimed indie pop project that features:

  • Brijean Murphy, a Los Angeles-born percussionist, who can trace the origins of her music career to her childhood: Murphy’s father Patrick is a percussionist and engineer, who taught a young Brijean her first patterns on a pair of congas that she inherited from the late Trinidadian steel pan drum legend Vince Charles. As a percussionist, the younger Murphy initially made a name for herself as a highly-sought after touring musician with sstints in the touring bands of Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls and Poolside, as well as several others.
  • Doug Stuart, a jazz and pop session musician and producer, who has worked with JOVM mainstays Bells Atlas, Meerna, Luke Temple, Jay Stone and others.

Their debut EP, 2019’s WALKIE TALKIE was written and recorded in marathon sessions at their intimate home studio, during breaks in Murphy’s then-very busy touring schedule. The EP found the duo quickly establishing a unique sound that meshed Murphy’s Latin jazz and soul upbringing with Murphy’s 70s disco and 90s house-inspired production.

The duo released their acclaimed, full-length debut Feelings last year, through Ghostly International. The months surrounding the album’s release rang bittersweet with the sudden death of Murphy’s father and both of Stuart’s parents. In a haze of heartache, the duo left the Bay Area to be near family, resetting in four cities in under two years. Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and the tracks they had started writing, along with Angelo, Murphy’s 1981 Toyota Celica became their few constants.

Angelo, the duo’s latest EP was released yesterday through Ghostly International. Deriving its name from Murphy’s car, the nine-song EP features songs that the pair have written and carried with them through a two year period of profound change, heartbreaking loss and nomadic relocation. The EP finds Murphy and Stuart processing one of the most difficult periods of their lives in the only way they know how — through rhythm and movement.

Interestingly, while Feelings formed through collaborative james with friends, the Angelo sessions gave Murphy and Stuart the chance to record at their most intimate — “to get us out of our grief and into our bodies,” Murphy says. Despite being informed by a dark and somber period of heartbreak and loss, Angelo beams with positivity and creative renewal, and sees the duo exploring vibrant new moods and hues while reaching for effervescent dance tempos.

Angelo EP‘s latest single “Take A Trip” is a neon-hued, summery, dance floor friendly bop featuring a strutting disco-inspired bass line paired with crowd-noise, handclaps, whip-cracks, a horse neigh, twinkling synths, and hiccuping cuíca paired with Murphy’s ethereal cooing. “This song is an inquiry into shifting perspectives – a way to deepen our lived experience by becoming aware of the unexplored facets of our own perception,” the band explain.

Directed by Nathan Castiel, the accompanying video for “Take a Trip” takes the viewer into a Dreamcast-era video game world that features the duo traveling through the cosmos to entertain all — and defeat an evil villain through music. But the video pulls back to follow the duo in our universe playing the video game fittingly called “Take A Trip” — and then driving in Murphy’s Toyota Celica.

“For the ‘Take A Trip’ video, I was inspired by Dreamcast-era video games and wanted to create something fun and otherworldly that interplays lo-fi 3D animation with the warmth of 16mm film,” Nathan Castiel explains.