DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, Ex-American rhythmanalyst, electronic musician, and curator. Brown’s debut book ‘Assembling a Black Counter Culture’ was released on Primary Information in 2022. As Speaker Music, he channels the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression. He has released three albums on Planet Mu; ‘Of Desire, Longing’ (2019), ‘Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry’ (2020) and ‘Techxodus’ (2023). His written work explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music, and has appeared in Artforum, The Wire Magazine, Triple Canopy, NPR, CTM Festival, Mixmag, among many others. He has performed or presented work at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Paris+ par Art Basel, Paris; Camden Arts Centre, London; Unsound Festival, Krakow; Sónar, Barcelona; Performa, New York; and elsewhere. He has also taught courses on the history and new media uses of Afrofuturism in music at The New School and Princeton University. In 2023, he co-curated HOPE, an international group exhibition presented by Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen as the final installment of the TECHNO HUMANITIES trilogy.
After three years of experimentation in isolation, in 2022, Dopplereffekt released Neurotelepathy, an oracular narrative of cerebral entanglement and advancement. The sleek mathematical models of their 2017 album Cellular Automata have now evolved into synaptic interpretations, transferences and modifications, rejecting binary expectations to meditate on the possibilities and pitfalls of what is to come. With their second LP and fifth release in total on Leisure System, the duo of Rudolf Klorzeiger and To-Nhan have achieved a near-telepathic capacity for collaborative thought and mechanical construction. They continue to use live appearances to present experimental trials of theoretical models, and that commitment is heard in the sizzle and swing of the percussive highlights that are programmed with a serious depth and wriggle that reflect both an extension of and return to form.
As of April 2024
Image by AbuQadim Haqq, Leo Rodrigues, and Hector Rubilar from The Technolords
