James Dean Brown
Labels: Perlon, WIR, Prospector, Arma, Serendip, Dark Entries, and others
Projects: Narcotic Syntax (w/Yapacc), Hypnobeat (w/Helena Hauff)
Residency: Get Perlonized
Producing and DJing for more than 20 years, and crossing a wide field of genres, James Dean Brown is an experienced story-teller. A crate digger, influenced by Soul, Funk, Prog and Exotica since his early teens, he keeps on living out his passion for music, the primary carrier of emotions. Still, his comprehensive experience and ever-expanding vinyl collection are steadily charged with wondrous music of diversified origin. Consequently, he merges an exciting variety of styles in his club, lounge and radio sets.
Club
James Dean Brown, living/working in Berlin, Frankfurt/Main and Paris, is deeply rooted in the adventuresome Perlon family and a DJ regular in the line-up of their monthly, celebrated "Get Perlonized" parties at Panorama Bar since 2001. His versatile, musical roller coaster rides are passionate, vinyl-based, of timeless quality and designed for gaining "The Emotional Maximum". They follow an approach of serious deepness, psychedelic vibration and voodoo magic, driven by a cordial punch. Minimalism means the reduction of conformity here. Filling and killing a floor, JDB's trips welcome the crowd back to the adventurous aspect of partying.
JDB is known for living up to calculated extravagant licentiousness. While he sets a club on fire by igniting a brew of effective dance propellants, his DJ manoeuvres produce a flow of inspiring surprises. A smart feel for progression and sound design finds expression in elegant fades and well-rounded resolutions. Lowering the floor down to the groundwater of euphoria, home of the bass, JDB arouses a swarm of sophisticated rhythms from there. Ranging from soulful and tribal vibes via West Coast House to all sorts of Club Funk, the space in between fills with sensuality, lascivious energy, temptation, and blasts of heat. The crowd's destination is collective freakability.
JDB played places and events in Germany, Europe and the world: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin (many), Bordeaux, Buenos Aires, Cologne, Corfu, Frankfurt, Gdansk, Geneva, Hamburg, Kassel (Documenta X), Kiev (3x Closer), Krakow, Kyoto (Star Festival), London (Fabric), Lyon, Mannheim (Time Warp 9), Milano, Moscow, Munich (Ultraschall), Nantes, Nice, Offenbach (Robert Johnson), Osaka, Paris (3x Concrete, Weather, many others), Rabat, Santiago de Chile, Sofia, Tbilisi, Tokyo, Toronto Vienna, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Zurich.
People rave about James Dean Brown's "oeuvre of massive dancefloor destruction", his "auditive tsunami" and his "exciting mix sessions (that) can manage your body in a way you didn't expect", while others, who have "seen him absolutely kill a dancefloor", even claim "…it was religious…".
2006-08, JDB was involved in A&R activities for Cologne-based Treibstoff Recordings, provider of high-energy club fuels, and participated in forming the musical profile of the associated WIR label.
Production + Live
Evolving from the seminal "Prototech" project Hypnobeat which he had founded in 1983, James Dean Brown formed Narcotic Syntax in 1995, a band he reboosted together with Yapacc in 2003. Narcotic Syntax collaborate with chanteuse Robert Conroy from NYC, released on Perlon, WIR, Prospector and play exclusively hardware live sets, occasionally joined by Pit Spector from Paris to convey the Narcopit Syntax trio experience.
In 2013, Hypnobeat retransformed from its successor Narcotic Syntax, with Helena Hauff joining James Dean Brown on stage. The duo's live performances are completely based on improvisation, exhausting the power of an untamed Roland horde which is unique on stage: 1 x TR-707 + 3 x TR-808 + 2x TB-303 + an array of effects = provocative percussion, voodoo passion, tribal ecstasy, hypnodelic temptation, psycho-exotic magic, universal resonance, and a quantum of danger under a crypto-bohemian approach.
Lounge
Welcome to the Narcôte d'Azur: heading for Lotus Land in the blue hours, James Dean Brown concocts brazenly seductive arrangements of exquisite tunes, evoking the whole spectrum of secret emotions. His ingredients: Exotica, Big Band Blues Noir, Loungecore, Mambo, Crime Jazz and other tropicalia from the golden age of coolness.
→ JDB – Blue Hours: http://www.narcoticsyntax.com/jdb/JDB-BlueHours.mp3
→ Songlist: http://www.narcoticsyntax.com/jdb/index/JDB-BlueHours.pdf
A former resident in Frankfurt's famous (meanwhile extinct) cocktail bar Coconut Groove, JDB furnished other classy venues like Bar Tausend in Berlin with made-to-measure music selections. Beyond doubt, one of the bizarre highlights of his DJ career was playing a billionaires' gala in the garden of the luxury hotel Cala Di Volpe in Porto Cervo on the island of Sardinia.
Radio
Emphasizing the psychedelic aspect of every music genre, James Dean Brown likes to create suspense by bringing up the "strange and unusual". He takes much pleasure in offering favourite treasures, curiosities, and sounds returned to the wild to the dearest friends of small wonders.
Between 1995 and 98, James Dean Brown, together with his colleague Christian Schroeder, presented the DJ concept Elektropensturm (Electropical Storm) live at various events. "In(tro)ducing the Unimaginable", a total of 24 shows featured an amazing variety of musical styles, formats and themes – acoustic and electronic, binary and orchestal – from Magnetopop via Dope Exotica and Stonertronics to Heavy Listening and other sparkling sources of escapism. After all, Elektropensturm became a 60-minutes live radio show on Radio X, Frankfurt, broadcasted weekly from 1997-2005.
Developing space-related music concepts, JDB played clubs, bars, lounges, galleries, art and media spaces, festivals, agencies, stores, and – as close to spirituality of sound as can get – even a church. Notable performances include a live remix of Brian Eno's soundscape to his environmental light installation Quiet Club, and providing the musical score for the exhibition "Berlin-Tokyo/ Tokyo-Berlin. The Art of Two Cities" at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.