What, if any, is the cultural significance of the musical duo known as Neon Brown? What is their form? What is their function?
They are brothers, one older and one younger. They built their own instruments: a 9-string guitar thing played mainly by tapping (Andrew Woods) and a wooden drum kit adorned with lids, pans, xylophenelia and bits of electronics (Adrian Woods). Both brothers also sing.
Their music is highly personal, a window into a world otherwise known only to them. The tone has many ingredients. Neon Brown has listened to and absorbed every sound that has ever crossed their shared trajectory. The mood is sometimes alienated but never distant, sometimes disturbed or disturbing but there is always still a feeling of warmth. Even at their most esoteric, Neon Brown remembers that sometimes you want to curl up into a little ball and sometimes you just want to dance. Neon Brown will never hurt you, unless it is ultimately to help you.
They operate these days just above the radar on the matrix that is Seattle’s odd and incestuous music scene. They host a twice-monthly improv night at Mr Spot’s Chai House, a joyous four blocks from my residence. In between they play shows on the local islands and, sometimes, up and down the west coast, usa, earth.
Also, they play rhythm section for TQ Berg in the group Indonesian Junk.
Also, they have self-produced and self-recorded and self-released at least two noteworthy CDs, in editions of 500 or so. The first of these is called Fiber, a deep and murky mood piece that should find a friend in any prog/psych-head.
The second, a brighter and somewhat more burnt offering, is called Nice Feathers. Herewith a summation:

Neon Brown as a power duo sets out intricately composed groove tapestries interspersed with full-on psychedelia. Live, either can dominate. “Nice Feathers,” recorded both live and in the kitchen, presents even amounts of both.
We tried Nice Feathers as background music at the picture framing shop... Tracks 1 and 2 (heavy intro “Nice Feathers” and “Inertia,” a fractured-time rant) scared a few customers away, but then the boys get way mellow with a spacey suite incorporating “Keychain”, a garage-prog 4D acidsoul classic (I swear I can hear the rug in this recording) & “Fancy Walkin’”, a frantic and rubbery vocal-instrumental long-distance runner that is the spirtual heir to Fiber’s “Tippin’ The Fridge” as well as a step on the ladder Tim Buckley began with Starsailor.
Next to arrive is the haunting post-drumnbass pseudopsycho-insecticidal “Aphid Tea” which runs many hypnotic minutes & then down to the Chai Chant.
“His Knees Are Rubber” includes the classic chorus “Bya, badum-zeep-zow, WHOO!” over a funkish groove, with segments apparently recorded from old vinyl through a telephone.
“Neoburn” is another largely instrumental groove epic, a somewhat more remote evolutionary branch from certain things on the wider-but-not-so-linear Fiber CD... The craggy peaks of distant planet Feathers, opposed to the submarine tones of the antecedent Fiber.
“Pants Then Shoes” is upbeat & speaks for itself (if you gets confused).
“Eddy” might be some kind of weird power ballad or just a bunch of dynamic scribbling - the bros’ distinct tone palette makes it hard to tell. It evolves sorta suddenly from sounding a lot like a “song” to being more of a full-figured jam into an underground cave arranged for bass and drum kit and then back into the light for a 9-string cadenza.
(Just sitting here reading through this is making me want to hear it again... yum)
“The Long Hall Of The Jambox” is a soundscape that either simulates or flat-out is what it sounds like to walk through the building where Neon Brown practices... 30 rock bands of varying quality bangin’ it out at once in tiny rooms separated by walls made of toilet paper and spit!
To my surprise, the CD rounds out with another take on “Nice Feathers,” a slow & heavy groove of some duration swimming under demented harmonized yodelling.
Some clips of things, as well as the cds themselves, are available at various places around neonbrown.com if you wants a sample and isn’t in Seattle.

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