From hard and harsh to soft and harmonious, brass instruments have always felt ambivalent, a contrast which finds its counterpart between their use as military accompaniment, in vaudeville comedy and their strong association with the divine. Leo Fincham (Worldpeace DMT) noticed this contrast first when performing with Viennese Actionist Hermann Nitsch. The stark difference when the punishing drone orchestra stopped and the toylike march of a traditional Viennese marching band began only helped reinforced the tone of each style.
The music for Brass Invaders began when mining for old SEGA video game soundtracks with MIDI models of brass instrumentation. Despite their intended use as light accompaniment, the music comes out crushed and blaring through the gaming device. Fincham arranged samples from these vintage SEGA games as a way to sketch out preliminary compositions which were later transcribed for live brass.
The finished record explores the various textures and resonances of brass instruments, from toylike to pompous to outright intimidating, from the powerful basses generated by the tuba, to the squelching trumpets that at times can be confused for the kind of bright MIDI synthesizers used in the music of the very SEGA games from which the arrangements were originally composed.
‘Kathy Goes To Hawaii’, made with 300SkullsAndCounting, was initially inspired by the detailed elegance of The Beach Boys’ Smile, but the finished track is a combination of diminutive synths from CASIO keyboards and bewildered screamo vocals, almost as if they’ve filtered the 1960’s through a dying calculator. The connection drawn here between noise and signal, cute and crazed, dark and light, and the inability to hear one without the other, is in a sense what characterizes the sonic character of the whole EP as a collection of sonic patchworks which melt into one another, never wanting to be still.
Written, produced and mixed by Leo Fincham
'Kathy Goes To Hawaii' written by Leo Fincham and Hal Hewetson, lyrics by Hal Hewetson
Mastered by Amir Shoat
Art by Hal Hewetson
