Brown Bones - Brown Bones

KUTX: Song Of The Day

Emerging singer songwriter, Brown Bones hits on the nerve of painful losses, peaceful passages, twilight battles and passionate swells on his forthcoming self-titled debut album. Oddly familiar with inventive twists, each song is a chapter of its own accord and all together a true and beautiful saga. Tipping his hat to folk and indie traditions while interweaving minimal, modern and electronic elements with an intoxicating freshness; Brown Bones is due August 27th.

Brown Bones is the alter ego of the esteemed producer and musician Andrew Moon Bain. Most known for his production with Luster King Productions, Andrew has worked and collaborated with celebrated artists like Diplo, Snoop Dogg, and Blakkamoore to name a few. During the 2020 lockdown, the industrious producer worked on music for himself and created the Brown Bones LP.  Brown Bones says, “ I have remained dedicated to being an artist and musician for many years, made the sacrifices and used to jokingly say to my friends when I would not give up ‘I’m an artist to the bone!’  it became a catch phrase among my crew. Brown being a tip of the hat at my heritage and for me the projection of our world’s future unified skin tones, so that developed into Brown Bones.”

The new album is a collection of songs crafted over the last 10 years. Reflecting back on the creation process, Brown Bones comments, “I carried the songs around with me from place to place and would set up where I could.  It became almost like luggage I would take out and wear an outfit, try it on, check it out, wash it and dress up again somewhere else.  They lived with me and inside me for  some time.”

He continues, “In having that satchel of songs and also being a producer for others, I kept them close but always on the back-burner to other people’s records and getting work, primarily. It was being halted at home, over the pandemic, that gave me the time and space to revisit everything and really dive in and actualize it. It felt incredible to loose myself in these songs; revisit, remember and achieve the vision.”

The result is a compelling album with heartfelt lyricism, and creates a page-turner of a record. Rich in story and intimate folklore, Brown Bones pulls from an ancestral place, yet is laced with a new audio essence and lyrical magic. Contributing to the new album are a cast of stellar artists including the late  Andrew “Drew Keys” Stoch (Shaggy, Common Kings) on keys, piano, trombone and melodica on “Arjanine”; Rex Howard (Burning Spear, Wyclef Jean) is the drummer on “I Become Light”; Phillip Peterson (Lorde, Maroon 5) performs strings on “Arjanine”; Brad Barr (The Slip, The Barr Brothers) played guitar and sang harmony on “Takes One to Know One”; Sara Azriel plays piano on “Vices” and “Ode to Reprieve” and sings harmony on ”These Old Ghosts”, “Ode to Reprieve” and “Tectonic Plates”;  Ray Gennari mixed “These Old Ghosts” and Laurent “Tippy I” Alfred mixed “Siren Market” as well as mastered the album.

For Brown Bones, “This album is a life story of experiences really. Each song is a chapter to me in a book full of  joy, pain, longing , heartache, peace, struggle, saga and all the emotions and ideas we digest on a daily basis in becoming ourselves.’ Most evident on the newly released song “Arajane,” Brown Bones reconciles drastic life changes, loss and staying positive through that challenge. “I heard the song in a dream, woke up and earnestly wrote the whole song in about 20-30 minutes. It was pretty wild. In my life- I had just been in a pretty bad motorcycle accident with my lady at the time, in the Dominican Republic. We got hit by a car while driving on the side of the highway. It all happened so fast, we ended up being air-lifted out of the country, back home to NYC Mt. Sinai hospital.” He continues, “It was a couple months later, during the recovery stages, that the song came to me.”

On the song “Vices,” Brown Bones reflects on sorrow and the effects of addiction. While sharing loss with a friend Brown Bones recalls, “I met an old high school friend,  she told me how her mother had died, drank herself to death and they found her alone near the bedroom closet. I was also dealing with another current, close friend of mine basically losing everything; job, family, friends etc. to drug addiction. So, her story sparked a deep sadness and struck a nerve. I wrote the song on the subway ride home, torn up by how devastating drugs and alcohol can be for those we love.” To sonically engage the listener, he used a drill press and clinking glasses to add tension and  a bit of edge and anxiety to the song.

Accompanying the release for the album will be a music video for “I Become Light.” On the song  Brown Bones sings about the unexpected passing of friend and colleague Drew Keys. A prolific musician, Drew contributed to the album’s song “Arjanine.” He was also an integral part of Andrew Moon Bain’s production team, ZION I KINGS. Reflecting back, Brown Bones comments, “He was a “plug and play” level studio musician and performer. I have records yet to be released that he played on for probably the next 5 years.” He continues, “I got the call from his old roommate, Kiva around 7am the morning after he was found. Within an hour or two, the lyric and melody ‘I’m an animal and I’m terrible, when I want to be alone…’ came to me and I wrote the song in honor of his memory.”  For Brown Bones “I Become Light” is about leaving your creative energetic legacy to live on after our physical presence is no longer.

Reflecting back on the new album and his songwriting, Brown Bones comments, “My hope is that the album resonates for listeners and is something they can live with, enjoy, relax with, relate to, reminisce to, be intimate with, laugh with and cry to. I believe music is a release. A healing, heartening and helpful expanse of our emotions, thoughts and experiences. I’d like this to help people cope with life, bring them solace. These songs are from the heart and all a real part of my life. Now, may they  become a part of yours.”