224: center:level:roar, by Youngblood Brass Band

Youngblood Brass Band (USA)
center:level:roar (2003)
15 tracks, 68 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Considering that the Youngblood Brass Band hail from Madison, Wisconsin, they are most definitely in the storied tradition of the New Orleans brass bands, but they don’t play the same stuff as you would hear on those streets in the 1950s. Theirs reflects the tradition’s place as folk music – music that moves with the people. So as well as playing that signature Louisiana jazz, their music is suffused with the sounds of hip-hop, breakbeat and funk. They were one of the first generation of groups to fully embrace the idea of a ‘hip-hop brass band’ along with the Soul Rebels and the Hot 8 Brass Band, which later became an important sound even in the venerable old bands such as Rebirth Brass Band and Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

So that’s what they do: their line-up – for this most exciting of their albums – is a 10-strong jumble of trumpets, trombones, tenor sax, sousaphone, drums and percussion, all set up to march with the best of them, but with the beats and funky basslines of hip-hop integral to the sound. Snare drummer David Hinzie-Skogen is also the group’s rapper, and his style ranges from almost-spoken word poetry in the more subdued pieces to the rapid-fire scream-spitting of Rage Against the Machine in the full-on bouncing tracks.

Although the raps are rich in content and rhythm, I rather prefer their instrumental tracks here – or the ones closest to instrumental – such as ‘Round 1’, ‘Camouflage’ and ‘V.I.P.’. And then there’s ‘Brooklyn’. Another instrumental track, ‘Brooklyn’ is just an incredible recording. The composition is absolutely spot-on for one thing: it moves between themes quite quickly, but they don’t come out of nowhere; each make sense with the ones around them, and each are as head-banging and foot-stomping as the others, the layers of music split between the instruments all coming together as a great barrage of sound. And you’ve got amazing solos too, from trombone, tenor sax, sousaphone and percussion as they roll through old-school New Orleans brass, soul, R’n’B and hip-hop on their journey. It’s a wonderful piece that quite rightly became the Youngbloods’ signature, and was even adopted into the brass band canon around the US.

Nat McIntosh’s sousaphone deserves a special mention too. Although the instrument is basically a fancy, stretched out and looped tuba, the sounds that McIntosh gets out of it are astounding. I’d never heard anything like it before. All throughout center:level:roar, the pieces are punctuated by the scratching of turntablism, strange synth chords and a whole range of sound effects from sirens to horses…but it’s all the sousaphone. By playing the instrument more like a didgeridoo – where the voice, embouchure and shape of the mouth cavity and throat are all manipulated to change the quality of sound rather than the pitch – McIntosh brings a whole new layer of sound to the traditional brass band set-up.

As a bit of a ‘you might also like…’, if you dig center:level:roar and a bunch of other stuff I’ve covered on this blog before, check out the Brooklyn Qawwali Party. They were formed by a few members of the Youngblood Brass Band and made a mash-up between brass band music, jazz, rock and qawwali music, their repertoire consisting solely of pieces made famous by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The results weren’t always exactly on the money, but it really is a fascinating experiment that has its special moments…and I’ve just noticed that they released a second album that I never knew existed, a whole seven years after their first. So that’s my evening sorted…