THE DEVIL'S MOUTH Vol. 154: ten rounds with Miles Brown (The Night Terrors)
Master of the theremin? For sure, but there's a lot more to the Australian musician too. Come find out!
I don’t think there’s any music nerd out there that does not instantly perk up at the sight of a theremin. One of the most enigmatic and unusual instruments, it feels ghostly and eerie, and at the same time also psychedelic and vague, if only for the bonkers way that it has to be played, by just using your body in an empty space, without any apparent physical contact with the instrument itself. Even the sound it produces sounds like nothing else, like a cross between the contemporary and the ancient, a voice of a spirit lost in the continuum of time. There aren’t many serious, professional theremin players in the world, and even fewer applying the instrument to the kind of music that we dig around here - dark, heavy and outside the box. Miles Brown is one of them, and that’s just one of the reasons why this Tasmania-born Australian musician is such a precious artist.
That’s Miles right there, performing alongside Mary Doumany on harp and voice, with his project The Narcoleptor, one of several he has developed over the years. His solo music under his name and the magnificent The Night Terrors are much more well known in general, but we discussed enough of those during the chat on this episode of the podcast, so this is the best way to still present you a bit of what Miles does and still give you something new. All his projects have very different characteristics and approaches - interestingly, Miles even mentions during our conversation that their respective audiences not only do not overlap, but actively don’t like each other! - but the haunting, alien nature of the music is common to all of them, so that intimidating little vampiric ditty will do as much as anything as a little taster of what awaits you in case you’re not familiar with this gentleman.
Apart from his theremin talents, Miles also sings and plays bass and synth, collaborates with several brilliant artists (he plays live with, and has appeared on a song by, the great Grace Cummings, for instance) and as it happens, he is also a wonderful music recommender. The list of ten songs he picked for our Ten Rounds is delightfully all over the place, and a very good way to start on this journey through the mind of an absolutely free and unpredictable musician.
Check out the episode by clicking on the main photo above, or right here.
You can check out both Miles Brown and The Night Terrors on Bandcamp.
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