Brady Cohan’s ongoing album series Studies, Vol. 2, is out now via Phantom Limb!
“Brady describes Studies, Vol. 2 as “a study in gestures”. Thematically, it acts as a continuation of the same musical landscapes ventured by December 2020’s first Studies volume – the same skilled, agile handling of guitar and electronics; the same radical chill of downtown LA’s vital jazz scene; the same distillation of musical mastery honed by years of composing film score. However, this new edition minimises the lush, slow-mo Malibu balm of the previous iteration in favour of a rarefied and subtle intensity. Where guest musician Sam Wilkes’ bassline in Volume 1 quietly grooves, Sam Gendel’s treated saxophone in Volume 2’s “Begin Again” smears and smudges an already-blurred canvas.” – Phantom Limb
Brady also presented a sequence of videos via ClotMag corresponding to three tracks from the record:
“Begin Again, the track of choice for the opening video sees LA master musician Sam Gendel turning Brady’s strange, echoing sonics into a nocturnal backdrop of dreamlike haze. while the video recreates a delicate 3D pointmapped space. With minimalistic colours and expression, the shapes foldings and expansions, elegantly follow the sound and nocturnal dreaminess. That nowhere land in between awakeness and sleep.”
“For Rally, Cohan tells us he really wanted the video to draw the viewer into this otherworldly space and illuminate the various subtleties happening in the music. The piece is based on a single repetitive musical gesture, with various other elements coming in and out as it progresses. He wanted the animation to react to the music in such a way that brought attention to those other, less obvious, elements.”
“For capitOl pt. 2, Cohan tells us is the darkest piece on the EP, as it deals with the actual breaching of the Capitol building. I used a public domain film of a protest from Griffith Park in 1933 as the backdrop for the video. I mangled and abstracted the footage to the point where it was almost unrecognizable, which gives the video the ominous and foreboding tone I wanted.”