Brian John McBrearty Releases First Single "Repeating" Today on Love Beyond Measure Records

Known for his rich, ruminative guitar-and-voice-forward music which Aquarium Drunkard has celebrated as “an awesome through line between Zuma, Marquee Moon and The Days of Wine and Roses,” Brian John McBrearty is an artist and a seeker and, with his latest album Remembering Repeating, he continues to expand his lush and diverse musical palette. Remembering Repeating is the first full-length recording that the 44-year-old Philadelphia native has made from which the guitar is entirely absent –– and his first instrumental outing in almost a decade. The record is instead built around resplendent synthesizer progressions, yearning sax, and steady, roiling rhythms. Taken altogether, it is at times reminiscent of Tortoise or Natural Information Society or the instrumental half of Another Green World. But despite a sense of familiarity and these few touchstones, Remembering Repeating is simply too personal to be anything but unique.

“There are emotions and life circumstances,” McBrearty says, “that are beyond words, that language is terribly inadequate to describe.” McBrearty began the process of recording Remembering Repeating in the wake of the unexpected deaths of his parents and it is, above all, a means to healing and was a way for McBrearty to bolster his spirit.

In a cycling sense, it is both all of this and none of it. Remembering Repeating has no words, but it is a poem. (This is both figurative and literal, as the track titles, read in succession, in fact comprise a poem.) It is overflowing with saxophone melodies –– played beautifully by The Mountain Goats’ Matt Douglas –– but it is not quite a jazz record. At its center are warm waterfalls of David Sylvian-esque synth, but it is not an ambient record. In its origins and intent, it is healing music, a means to an end, but in its release, it is an end in itself. “Music has an elemental purpose,” McBrearty says. “Music is non-descriptive but remains deeply communicative; and the unspeakable truth can be ‘spoken’ through music.” If this sounds spiritual, that’s because it is. McBrearty’s relationship to music is unabashedly, deeply spiritual and even the remarkable way in which the record was recorded somehow seems to reflect this. Drummer Ryan Jewell largely tracked drums after the synthesizers and bass were recorded. This effectively inside-out process demands some leaps of faith and a sense of intuition which all the players clearly rely on.

Album opener “Remembering” was, appropriately, the first track McBrearty composed. “I had no intention of making an album when I began recording the synth tracks that would become the basis for this record. I simply wanted to learn how to better use a synthesizer I had purchased years before (a Roland Boutique JU-06).” Opening with sustained synth chord clusters that ring out while sax and drums lightly explore the resonant space, “Remembering” then pivots to an Alice Coltrane-esque theme on the synthesizer, with the saxophone stating a lilting melody before launching into improvised territory.

“Repeating” follows and demonstrates McBrearty’s uncanny ability to exploit foundational concepts for maximum effect. “First and foremost, I consider myself a composer; whatever instruments I play are in service of the tune,” McBrearty explains. Opening with a bass solo drenched in tape echo, “Repeating” coalesces around a simple half-note saxophone melody played over a jaunty beat and McBrearty’s descending, syncopated synth lines that sound straight out of a Tangerine Dream soundtrack. While the original melody repeats, the melody is then duplicated and displaced by a quarter note; the saxophone is eating its own tail. Literally “Repeating” in real time, Douglas takes the concept and runs with it—layering sax and flute and weaving the theme of repetition into his improvisation.

Collaboration is a key part of McBrearty’s musical practice and Remembering Repeating includes two short interlude tracks that are credited to all three musicians. “Burning” combines a haunting theme written by Douglas, drum improvisations from Jewell that are compressed into sheets of metal, and atonal synth loops that swell into focus at the very end of the track. “Floating,” meanwhile, was inspired by an unlikely source. “That tune was me attempting to replicate the sound my tea kettle made as it was heating up,” McBrearty reveals. Based on sustained synth tones that literally float between the notes C and C#, “Floating” presents a brief trip into the heart of darkness. Douglas switches to soprano sax for an eerie and sinister melody, while Jewell adorns the sonic space with bowed cymbals and bells.

In contrast to the short interludes, “Unfolding” is Remembering Repeating’s extended centerpiece, and a mission statement summarizing McBrearty’s compositional interests and achievements. Cinematic, beautiful, and patient, “Unfolding” slowly reveals layer-after-layer over the course of 9+ minutes. Beginning with interlocking synth lines repeating a cluster of notes within the same octave, McBrearty deftly adds and subtracts harmonic and melodic elements on synthesizer throughout the first half of the tune, creating a heady stew that fans of Bitchin’ Bajas’ twisted synth explorations, or the repetition of Bing & Ruth, will surely appreciate. “I was coming up with idea after idea after writing the initial riff that provided the foundation for ‘Unfolding,’” McBrearty says. “It was stream of consciousness, pure creation, but the real songwriting came months later when I arranged and mixed the various parts to form a cohesive whole.” Nearly 5 minutes in, a cymbal swell anticipates the entry of Douglas’ tenor sax, drenched in warm reverb and floating over a laid-back and absurdly in-the-pocket groove courtesy of Jewell’s drumming and McBrearty’s bass playing.

The A and B sides of Remembering Repeating both close with tender, heartrending pieces to conclude their respective journeys. Side A closer “Believing” is a balm for the soul and a testament to the power of sound. At the intersection of John Coltrane’s “Central Park West” and The Beatles’ “Sun King,” the song offers a healing force that is rarely captured in recorded music. Meanwhile, the final song of the album, “Receiving”—and the only piece to feature McBrearty’s (lyric-less) vocals—is a visceral portrayal of grief that ends with catharsis as Jewell’s drums and Douglas’ tenor sax swirl and envelop in the climactic final moments.

Though Remembering Repeating is flawlessly executed, McBrearty notes that as the years go by, he is “less and less concerned with technical proficiency.” Not to say the music lacks either technicality or proficiency. Rather, McBrearty’s relationship to the music reflects an internal shift of emphasis to “taking a more expansive view, getting out of the way and allowing intuition to guide you.” “My music is about expressing and achieving spirituality, a sort of sacrament, communion with the eternal … there are many ways to phrase it,” he says.

Some ways, it would seem, without saying anything at all.

McBrearty is a veteran DIY musician and has quietly amassed a diverse array of releases as leader and chief songwriter of several bands and, more recently, under his own name. “I have a distinct memory of hearing David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ on the radio in the car as a child,” McBrearty recalls, “and my Dad explained with admiration that Bowie was a shape-shifting artist whose music and persona had changed over the years. So, this idea of constantly seeking, trying to challenge myself to do something different, is a concept that I’ve valued before I first picked up an instrument.”

McBrearty’s musical journey began in earnest as a student in NYU’s esteemed jazz studies program. There he met Remembering Repeating contributor, Matt Douglas, as well as Love Beyond Measure Records co-founder Anthony Pirog (DC-based cellist Janel Leppin—and collaborator on McBrearty’s last album—is also a co-founder of the label). The sympatico between Pirog and McBrearty was apparent upon first meeting and after graduating they co-founded the bombastic and all-too-short-lived instrumental rock band New Electric, which issued only one EP in 2005, toured extensively in the mid-Atlantic, and could be considered the spiritual antecedent of Pirog’s current jazz-punk outfit The Messthetics featuring Fugazi’s Brendan Canty and Joe Lally.

In all of McBrearty’s musical endeavors, improvisation is the through-line. From a month-long weekly residency at Lower Manhattan’s Knitting Factory in the early aughts to participating in a guitar ensemble rendition of Julius Eastman’s “Gay Guerilla” (part of Bowerbird’s first of its kind Eastman retrospective) to the interlacing, angular dual-guitar attack of now-defunct Philadelphia jammers Mesmeric Haze to the panoramic and kaleidoscopic synthesizers of Remembering Repeating, McBrearty has consistently demonstrated an affinity for exploration on the fly. “I take a broad view of improvisation,” McBrearty explains. “It’s not just jamming and soloing. I’m often improvising when I’m composing, which is largely how the building blocks of Remembering Repeating were formed. I can improvise when I’m arranging or mixing a song. For me, it’s all about listening to what I hear within myself as well as outside of myself and synthesizing the two.”

From synthesis to synthesizers. A repeating, cycling of sound.

McBrearty’s expansive view of improvisation takes center stage on his twice-monthly radio show Improvised Solutions, which airs on Northwest Philly’s Germantown Community Radio. With more than 20 years playing in the Philly music scene, the radio show offers McBrearty a different way to interface with the music community after having shared the stage with the likes of Kinloch Nelson, Elkhorn, One Eleven Heavy, and even The War on Drugs (when they were still playing small clubs).

Love Beyond Measure Records is a label founded by life partners and musicians Janel Leppin and Anthony Pirog as a home for their favorite artists as well as for their own work. They are proud to present the superb work of Brian John McBrearty, Remembering Repeating, as the inaugural release on Love Beyond Measure Records.