Lucas Brode: guitarist & composer

Two new collections of recordings in the past month! Released late in February by Orb Tapes, “There Will Always Be Instruments” is a collection of improvisations with Patrick Shiroishi (saxophones) and Kevin Sims (percussion). It is our first collaboration and we are calling the group Sherule Trio. The album is available on cassette and digital here: https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/album/there-will-always-be-instruments

My other recent release is a duo album with G. Calvin Weston. “Imagination/Meditation” is our second official album and first since 2015. Also totally improvised, but somewhat song oriented in approach, it is available on CD, cassette, and digital via Cacophonous Revival Recordings here: https://cacophonousrevivalrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/imagination-meditation

…please consider giving them each a listen, as they represented two different sides of my guitar playing at the moment. More recordings in the works now, but it might be awhile until anything else is officially released.

I have a new album out today, which I am self-releasing on my bandcamp page. A collection of solo acoustic guitar music recorded in April 2020, TACONIC is a dreamy autobiography drenched in nostalgia. It is also the first album I have recorded that features no electric guitar, which was a new challenge for me. I was inspired to make this record after being asked to contribute to the ninth volume of the acoustic guitar focused Imaginational Anthem compilation for the Tompkins Square label. My track Knots Where Never Was, which became a staple of my solo sets for my last few tours, sort of just slipped out very organically without much fuss. Shortly thereafter, so did the fourteen tracks that make up TACONIC. The digital download also includes a PDF transcription of the music (standard notation / tab). I have self-pressed a small number of cassettes for the time being, so if you are interested in that please order ASAP. Either way, please consider giving it a listen/purchase and I hope you enjoy it.

Surprise! I spent a few hours each afternoon for 4 days in a row recording and ended up with an album. In a few fits of inspiration, I simply set up the microphones and started playing until some pieces formed. The result is ‘Shapes, December 2021’ which is now up on my Bandcamp page for whatever price you decide. I describe it there as ‘a series of rhythmic-ambient textural mazes for finding peace during the descent further towards prolonged darkness and bitter cold.’ These pieces are centered around the electric guitar with loops, effects, and percussion. Please give it a listen at your convenience and I hope you enjoy.

Check out my recent interview with Jazz Right Now here:
https://www.jazzrightnow.com/interview-lucas-brode/

Vague Sense of Virtue still available on CD/cassette/digital through Cacophonous Revival, here are some quotes from reviews:

“Vague sense of virtue, out just a handful of days after autumn begins, is the perfect soundtrack for the season of long shadows. Although the music has a low-key warmth to it, at the same time it’s pervaded by an abstract melancholy. It’s a well crafted sonic portrait of rumination and drifting emotions.”
-Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News

“With their associative movements, the melodic lines played by Brode, their music sounds like an evocation of a dreamlike world.”
-Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly

“Brode and Shea took stock of their environment and played directly to it, injecting a little “ambient” into this whole thing. They play the room, letting the sound interact with the walls and themselves, letting it alight on their bodies.”
– Ryan Masteller, Tabs Out

This is a recording from a session with two fantastic and very reactive musicians. Julius Masri from Philadelphia and Shayna Dulberger from Brooklyn. We recorded it at my home studio in the Hudson Valley. We all have a long history of performing punk-related and texturally focused musics in addition to jazz and improvisation, so the result is a shockingly cohesive and varied album dubbed indignants. It is available here now digitally and also in home-made cassette form, which you can order on my bandcamp page now.

“Lucas Brode’s SPYING” is a full-length album of guitar/drum duo music, solo guitar pieces, and sound collages. It is a mixture of the semi-meaningless genre names avant-rock, jazz-fusion, and ambient/noise. There are both ripping guitar solos and introspective wanderings. SPYING grew from a touring duo of the same name with drummer Sammy Wags, who is featured on several tracks. The band was active from the fall of 2015 to the summer of 2017. The album is simultaneously a document of the past and a prediction of the future. In addition to digital download, it is pressed on beautiful CDs in 4-panel wallets and some homemade cassettes.

You can pre-order and listen to the track “Pales in Comparison” here now:

My recent solo album I Lick the Kerosene of Progress came out this fall and has received a few kind words from various outlets, here are some quotes:

“The interludes give a more relaxed and almost Twin Peaks soundtrack kind of haunting vibe, which perfectly offsets the interlocking complexity and constant motion of the composed pieces.”
– Fecking Bahamas
[http://feckingbahamas.com/lucas-brode-i-lick-the-kerosene-of-progress-2017]

“Train whistle effects and echoey Lynchian sonics pervade the brief prelude that opens the album: it’s impossible to tell how Brode is working the strings. Sudden Subtle Shift is sort of a mashup of early 80s Robert Fripp and Bill Frisell. ”
– New York Music Daily
[http://newyorkmusicdaily.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/lb]

“The roll-out of melodies is the album’s transformative moment, time and again. Sometimes the melody appears like the dawn over the horizon, sometimes it’s stuttered out like a nervous tic, and other times it eschews form and structure for a pervasive cinematic ambiance.”
– Bird is the Worm
[http://www.birdistheworm.com/the-round-up-when-falling-becomes-flying-become-pure-light]

The album is available for download and physical purchase (cassette and/or zine) on my Bandcamp page here: http://lucasbrode.bandcamp.com/album/i-lick-the-kerosene-of-progress

 

I Lick the Kerosene of Progress is an album of solo guitar music that sounds somewhere in the realm of later Don Caballero (without a full band) or earlier Kaki King (on electric guitar), but is more influenced compositionally by the music of Steve Reich and West African drumming rhythms. These pieces are augmented with ambient and improvised interludes, which gives the album a more varied sound and conversational tone. The music was composed over the past several years while I developed a unique rhythmic sensibility on guitar, primarily through the use of tapping. All sounds were recorded, mixed, and mastered at my home studio in New York in August 2016. The accompanying visual pamphlet/comic, brought to life by LA based illustrator & animator Ken Siu, features a panel for each track, as well as a lyrical representation of themes present in the music and images.

Pre-order & listen the track Today is a Long Uphill Battle I Will Stalemate at Best here: