Track Listing

1. On Safe-Cracking and Rubella
2. Crime (and the Antique Solution)
3. You Never Know
4. The Vapours
5. Cameo
6. Candles (Cast Long Shadows)
7. Au, Revoir, Mr. Mercury
8. Captain Mainwaring
9. A Year in Heaven
10. The Remarkable Cholmondley Chute System
11. Breathe
12. Strange Days

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #214654 in Music
• Released on: 2006-10-03
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Album Description
Brazil returns with their much anticipated full length and debut album for Immortal Records: "The Philosophy of Velocity", produced by Dave Fridmann and Brazil.

From the Artist
BAND MEMBERS: Jonathon Newby: vocals, keyboards Eric Johnson: guitar Aaron Smith: guitar Nic Newby: keyboards Philip Williams: bass James Sefchek: drums

About the Artist
You can't "be" creative; it just happens-mostly when you're not forcing its hand, and hardly ever on the eve of a deadline. But when the creative process strikes, when everything clicks and your muse suddenly comes into focus, that's when you find the potential for magic-or terror. Either way, the results are usually transcendent.

When you're in a struggling rock band, however, you don't always have the luxury of waiting around for your muse to appear. Brazil's Jonathon Newby realized this when, just days after completing a 14-month tour in 2005, he came home to Muncie, Indiana, to resume his day job at a metal shop.

"We were out with bands like Sparta and Coheed And Cambria," Jonathon remembers of the campaign, dates of which also found Brazil supporting Engine Down and Rainer Maria, "and the next thing I know, I'm back home, working all day at the shop. Coming back into a routine like that, it just gets harder and harder to be creative when you're exhausted and sweaty and covered in mud from, you know, handling glass and aluminum frames all day."

But a funny thing happened when Jonathan-who rounds out Brazil with his keyboardist brother Nic, guitarists Aaron Smith and Eric Johnson, bassist Philip Williams and drummer James Sefchek-returned to the daily grind. "The more uncomfortable I got with my working life outside of the band, the more I needed to write," he says. "That whole period of discomfort gave birth to a lot of new material." Soon, the songs started flowing, and the members of Brazil, all of whom were feeling a similar existential tug, just clicked. Sealed off in Jonathon's garage, they began working furiously on the material that would become their second album and Immortal Records debut, The Philosophy Of Velocity. With Jonathon's typically alluring lyrics interweaving characters such as existential steam robots ("Mr. Mercury") with manic-depressive submarine captains ("Captain Mainwaring"), the new album is a farcical document of the creative process itself, full of odd vignettes and absurdist rabbit holes that eventually lead the listener to the heart of the story. Musically, Velocity burns with fully realized sonic explorations by the band and producer Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev)-who collectively "utilized nearly every piece of equipment at our disposal," according to Jonathon, including multiple pianos, orchestral percussion, and experimental miking techniques, to create Brazil's most artful and ambitious album yet.

Of course, fans will tell you that creative tension has been central to Brazil's music from day one: In 2000, after the breakup of his unremarkable former group, Jonathon left the U.S. to live in the Arab quarter of a small Belgian town; after months of laboring overseas in warehouses, during which he kept himself sane by formulating plans for a new musical project, he returned to the States, finally settling into the chapel of an abandoned, century-old church. It was here that the nucleus of Brazil (a reference to Terry Gilliam's classic Orwellian-nightmare film of the same name) would arrive. After recording a handful of demos in the church's dank basement, Brazil started to play out, gaining a small but devoted fanbase throughout the Midwest. In August of 2001, the band hit the road for a three-week, self-booked U.S. tour in a dying minivan-an experience which, if nothing else, "revealed just how long the human body can survive on peanut butter and multivitamins," Jonathon remembers. However, impressed by their near-masochistic drive, Fearless Records offered to release the band's 2002 debut EP, Dasein (it translates roughly to "existence") and once more sent them out on the road in support. Like many debut releases, Dasein was a snapshot of the still-young band's attempts to reconcile their influences with their ambitions; and while the overall response to the EP was mixed, even Brazil's biggest critics recognized the potential within. "[Dasein] hints that big things may be in Brazil's future," wrote Aversion.com. Skratch Magazine concurred, adding, "Fearless Records has a monster band on their hands." And indeed they did-though not even the label was prepared for the album that would follow.

Released by Fearless in April of 2004, A Hostage And The Meaning Of Life was such a quantum leap forward, it might as well have been the work of a different band. The skittering rhythms and cloudy keyboard atmospheres of Dasein had given way to crystalline keyboard figures and a grand, eloquent sense of rhythmic flow that extended all the way up to Jonathon's chilling upper-register pipes. Alternative Press responded right out of the gate with a 5/5 review, calling the band "mad geniuses." Emotionalpunk.com upped the ante to 10/10, proclaiming Brazil to be "the best-kept secret on Fearless Records... until now." And Synthesis magazine concurred, adding, "[Brazil] effectively transcend the commercial crap of the industry and offer a high-energy alt-rock alternative to the mainstream." Don't believe the critics? Hostage is among those exceedingly rare albums on Amazon.com to have a unanimous five-star rating from fans.

While the aforementioned 14-month campaign supporting Hostage found Brazil picking up momentum with each stop, the decidedly unglamorous return to daily life found them wondering what next? And so Jonathon moved into a tiny house back in Indiana, the tinier garage of which would become the Petri dish for Brazil's new material. In March of 2006, after being floored by the new demos, Immortal Records offered the band a deal, and soon afterward, Brazil holed themselves up at Tarbox Road Studios in remote Cassadaga, New York, with aural genius Fridmann to commit The Philosophy Of Velocity to tape. With the band finally having access to the giant canvas their art has always begged for, the result is a blissful, expansive marriage of pure sound that, although right in line with the Brazil of old, weaves together the wombadelic impressionism of My Bloody Valentine with the melodic/harmonic ambitions of Queen and Yes and the wry lyricism of Lou Reed and Nick Cave. Of course, there's some danger in revealing a band's influences when the work they produce is this next-level-and with The Philosophy Of Velocity, Brazil have moved beyond the obvious into a thrilling new sound that's unbound by genre and indebted to what's come before it only inasmuch as "rock" is indebted to, you know, "music." And while it may not seem surprising that none of this could've happened if not for a wandering spirit and a drudgingly unremarkable shift at a metal shop, stop for a moment and ask yourself how many songwriters in similar situations have actually broken free of that grind to create something with universal truth. Suddenly casts the line "Don't quit your day job" in a whole new light, doesn't it?

Customer Reviews

Accessible Progressive music
A lot of ppl have been comparing this band to the Mars Volta, which I don't agree with. Nobody sounds like the Mars Volta. No, Brazil has their own sound. At the center of their sound is the piano. The band plays a progressive style of rock that accompanies melodies and at times, catchy songs. I would compare their style to 70's rock but with a modern twist. This stuff sounds very epic with production from Dave Fridman(Flaming Lips, Thursday). Just check out the track 2 "Crime". I was sold after that track alone.

Re-Loused in the Comatorium
Jonathon Newby must have a set of pitch pipes tuned to Cedric Bixler's vocal cords, because there are times that his singing inflection is a dead ringer for the current Mars Volta vocalist's style. "The Philosophy of Velocity" itself plays like a sequel to that band's 2003 release, "De-Loused in the Comatorium"--a punk's brisk run through poppy fields planted with lyrical razorwire. Although Newby's lyrics are considerably more "down-to-earth" when put up against contemporaries like the Mars Volta, it's the uniquely energized crunch of this album that should earn Brazil a spot in today's music scene beyond "that band that sounds like At The Drive-In with a piano."

Their "Philosophy" bumps shoulders with various facets of Omar and Cedric's bands, but at all the right moments: opener "Crime (And The Antique Solution)" busts out of the start-gate with a punishing-yet-trippy think-it's-a-guitar riff and a vocal inertia that should win over naysayers within a few bars. The music is complex, but with stronger reliance on polyrhythm rather than the inclusion of "strange" rock instrumentation.

"A Year In Heaven"'s grand chording on piano suggests epic jazz-blues at first, but delivers a soupy feast of guitar experimentation and self-harmonizing from Newby, still underscored by the same piano. The song later enters an acoustic finger-plucked passage supported with woebegone electric piano arpeggios, then revs back up for a grand exit. Then we go down "The Remarkable Cholmondeley Chute System" in just under 50 seconds, and come across "Breathe," a song which bears little resemblance to the Pink Floyd song of the same name, except perhaps in spirit. Among the most straightforward rockers on "Philosophy," "Breathe" still manages to sound like nothing else being produced today. Even the Mars Volta don't sound like this anymore.

Few modern artists possess the fearlessness required to repeat the experiments of yesteryear, and even fewer of them have the talents to come out of such re-experiments with something listenable in hand. Brazil have done it with their latest record. Even if it's only a trip down memory lane, "The Philosophy of Velocity" is a trip any fan of concept albums and madman experimentation can't afford to pass up.

Breathe in, Breathe out, your final mission
Brazil has been one of my favorite bands for a couple years now. A Hostage...
is a top 20 album for me; naturally I've been waiting for their next effort with great anticipation. Once again they do not dissapoint, fellow fans and I. It has many similarities to A Hostage, that makes them unique. It's a little more accessible than A Hostage, but it shows that their pop sensibilities excel the majority of music today. Breathe, Crime and Antique, and You never Know are my personal faves.

If you like/dislike review let me know