Or maybe it would be better to not ...

March 22, 2004 6:47 PM

Listen To The Future.We hope you like his new music. It's hard to believe, but every note, every instrument, EVEN EVERY SINGING VOICE on Brandon's new CD was played on a keyboard by just one person...Brandon Trinity.
posted by grabbingsand (27 comments total)

The Future hurts both my ears and my eyes.
posted by uftheory at 7:10 PM on March 22, 2004

In the future, everyone you went to high school with will be famous for fifteen minutes.
posted by jpoulos at 7:30 PM on March 22, 2004

*digs through closet for glowsticks and pacifier*

I love all of you SO much.
posted by 4easypayments at 7:32 PM on March 22, 2004

Twenty seconds of new age disco hell made me a believer in the power of the back button.
posted by kozad at 7:33 PM on March 22, 2004

Hmm, are you sure the singing voices are synthesised on a keyboard? Like Vocaloid is suppossed to be the most advanced software for synthesizing voices and it sounds less human than this guys stuff.
posted by bobo123 at 7:37 PM on March 22, 2004

Hmm, are you sure the singing voices are synthesised on a keyboard?

I'm pretty sure he sampled human voices and played them on the keyboard.
posted by jpoulos at 7:45 PM on March 22, 2004

MockeryFilter?
posted by namespan at 7:45 PM on March 22, 2004

I've heard much worse.
posted by kindall at 7:49 PM on March 22, 2004

So, this Brandon Trinity...he vibrates musicalizes?

I listened to one track and...quite frankly, it hurt.
posted by davidmsc at 7:49 PM on March 22, 2004

I'm with kindall...this guy reminds of that dork from Real World New Orleans tho.
posted by amberglow at 7:55 PM on March 22, 2004

He has a promising future composing music for the next release of DDR.

*found herself thinking, 'up up back back left up back' two seconds in*
posted by precocious at 7:55 PM on March 22, 2004

Blame Garage Band .
posted by btwillig at 7:56 PM on March 22, 2004

add a "me" in there
posted by amberglow at 7:56 PM on March 22, 2004

Are you sure you didn't snag this from blort, grabbingsand?
posted by anathema at 7:58 PM on March 22, 2004

And Brandon, if you happen to stop by, please check out this thread.
posted by anathema at 8:02 PM on March 22, 2004

stop insulting my blog.
posted by quonsar at 8:02 PM on March 22, 2004

Brandon did have a little help in his quest, and that was from me his dad... Stuart Lee. I am his biggest fan, most loyal supporter, co-writer and manager. I helped arrange songs and wrote all the lyrics.

How very interesting. Also kind of sweet -- I was going to joke about how much he sucks but suddenly now I feel like a jerk. (Look how much his dad loves him! *sniff*) They're probably having loads of fun. More power to them and their awful music.
posted by boredomjockey at 8:07 PM on March 22, 2004

Yeah, let's make fun of some poor slob who decided to take a whack at making something. That's a constructive use of bandwidth.
posted by jonmc at 8:10 PM on March 22, 2004

On preview: amen, boredomjockey. I'll take good hearted incompetence over cynical wizardry anyday.
posted by jonmc at 8:10 PM on March 22, 2004

Brandon strives to make his songs "musical journey's"

I'm glad, because he just took a musical journey to my recycle bin.

Although, quite honestly, it's no worse than some of the repetitive bullshit electronica that gets lauded every day, probably by some of the same people here grinding this down.

The problem is the style, not the execution.
posted by Ynoxas at 8:32 PM on March 22, 2004

I'm sure that MDMA cooks your brain, but not to the point that you become a hippie with Down's Syndrome who escaped from "The Jetsons." This must be a remnant of some failed viral marketing campaign from Europe ala SuperGreg. If he was real, he'd be too addled to load Dreamweaver or remember to pay for the hosting.
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:56 PM on March 22, 2004

I love techno. I've loved it for 15+ years. I even actually love Psychic TV, most of which is just damn awful drug-addled random noodlings and noise.

That just hurt. A lot. A whole lot. And it beats Aqua's "Barbie Girl" as farthest removed from the urban-shaman techno ethos, hands down.

Sorry "Trinity", but that has more in common with exceptionally bad top 40 dance pop than any sort of listenable (or danceable) modern/contemporary dance music. This is even worse than the default patterns in Fruity Loops.

Disco is bad, mmmkay? That's disco. Not techno. Not house. Not even anywhere near acid house. Disco. Glitter and rhinestones and light and no damn substance, except for maybe the innocent, naive and happy beginnings of a serious coke habit. No soul. No funk. No magic.

Yin and yang, man. Dark and light. You can't embrace light without darkness, else you get thrown off-balance.

Nonstop bubblegum'll just melt your brain, homes. If it makes you happy, go for it I guess, but you've been warned. Have all the fun you want, and don't let my opinions stop you. Good luck, and I hope you find depth and balance.

(And if any of you DJs that I know play this - however unlikely - at any gathering or club that I'm at, no matter how ironically intended, I will straight fuck your shit up and down. There will be ritual burnings of your vinyl and CDs. I know you know who I am.)
posted by loquacious at 9:29 PM on March 22, 2004

Oh, and I forgot. The "singing" is quite certainly not a synthesized voice, it is indeed just samples played/recorded by a sequencer and pitch-bent.

To quote: unlike anything, anyone has ever heard before and Unbelievable but true, Brandon’s CD is not a mix tape, every melody, every song, every note, every instrument, EVEN EVERY SINGING VOICE was played on a keyboard by just one person...

Art of Noise did this in the 80s. So did Yello. So did thousands of other synthpop bands from the era, most of which totally sucked.

My loathing for this is fueled in part by these bombastic and entirely false claims of originality. I have a feeling his dad is just pie-eyed at what can happen with a few thousand bucks worth of gear and is unable to discern between "playing a keyboard" and sequencing or multitracking, and has dollar signs in his eyes to recoup and expand on his investment in equipment. Part this loathing is fueled by this fairly transparent desire to "make lots of money", to quote one 80s synthpop band. Part of it is fueled by the predictable and unoriginal nature of the music itself.

Yeah, I'm being critical, and possibly a little mean. Welcome to the internet.

However: Trinity, if you happen to read this thread, I'll be more than happy to elaborate (Nicely, but brutally honestly. You can't buy that anywhere.) and give you recommendations of all things electronic and experimental from the 60s until now to listen to to expand your horizons. Criticism without a why and how attached to it is useless.

If you're willing to listen and learn, if you're willing to ask questions and accept criticism, please feel free to contact me via the information listed in my user profile.
posted by loquacious at 9:59 PM on March 22, 2004

" Is there anything nice said at all? " my gal Jenn says after I read her a good amount of the posts here.

" No, they are all on point." I say. A she walks over to see Brandon superimposed over on of the many fractal backgrounds.

BRANDON is not only an electronic musician, he’s also is great magician and illusionist.


I can only imagine his bag of tricks, his whole cyber-shaman wondertrip of singing voices AND magic to Estelle and Bernard Gustafsson's 50th wedding anniversary.


I keep ( FOR REAL!) seeing there weird illusions of my own

Brandon Trinity is currently independently produced

I saw this as

Brandon Trinity is currently inadequately produced

( as well a similarity between melody and malady would sway like a mirage on the screen )

He has a review elsewhere

Whew.

The bios by the way - I don't know how anyone can come up with such "high-falutin" crap. As a musician I know how hard it can be to pen something when doing the stuff on your own, but this over-the-top approach.... wow.

Hey Dad take another aspirin - and hey you wanna drive me to the music store?
posted by RubberHen at 11:09 PM on March 22, 2004

It's hard to believe, but every note, every instrument, EVEN EVERY SINGING VOICE on Brandon's new CD was played on a keyboard by just one person...

Welcome to sampling and MIDI! The majority of tracks you'll find on ReasonStation are written by artists using only one MIDI keyboard and software (Reason) (and you can even find some of my own tracks there if you search my name sake). Even these days you don't need to sing on your tracks - a computer can do that too.
posted by SpaceCadet at 5:10 AM on March 23, 2004

One of his songs is called "Let the music loudly play". . . are you kidding me?
posted by untuckedshirts at 9:15 AM on March 23, 2004

Brandon Trinity’s magical sound's, are unlike anything, anyone has ever heard before.

But his punctuation skill's, are just like, those of hacks everywhere.
posted by soyjoy at 12:33 PM on March 23, 2004