PRESS:
Below you'll find an archive of press clippings regarding Brother Raven, unedited for maximum pleasure. If your looking for a press quote, here's where to find it.
On Diving into the Pineapple Portal LP
"Among the hoards of synthesizer revivalists and worshipers, there's a handful that are novel enough to concoct a well-versed mixture of archaic and modern sounds and stand out among the rest. The list only consists of a select few, including Emeralds, Caboladies, and Brother Raven-- the Seattle duo of Jamie Potter and Jason E. Anderson. Though Diving Into The Pineapple Portal was released this year, their only proper album of recent works would be the Digitalis LP VSS-30; Diving Into The Pineapple Portal is the Aguirre Records reissue of Brother Raven's debut cassette release on Jason E. Anderson's Gift Tapes imprint from early last year.
To cut the history lesson short, the four pieces contained on this effort take the new age/komische formula and completely deconstruct it to a formless arrangement. The sounds that we once scoffed at and made punchlines out of are put into a breathtaking new context thanks to the spontaneous musical interaction between Potter and Anderson. Synthesizers are the driving force of these excursions, however tapes and effects are used too, which render the loops shaky and wobbly, infrequently altering their pitch. Brother Raven give credit to a long-gone era of music within the warm stupor of analog equipment and yet propose music that could have only been made in a contemporary time.
At a concise 30 minutes, Brother Raven produce the cream of synth worship's crop without crossing the threshold of overindulgence. Sequenced melodies are uttered in shape-shifting tempos as subtler tones and phrases gradually introduce themselves on the title track, and the closer "Happy Astronaut" features a ramshackle pattern of percussive keys further accentuated by a bass hum that circulates throughout the left and right channels. Diving Into The Pineapple Portal is a mind-altering yet tranquil experience (with a bonus cassette to boot) that will float any Cluster frequenter's sea canoe."
~Olive Music
"Fantastic new album from this Seattle-based duo who trade new age synth stylings for lapping cosmo-tones ala Sun Ra circa “Love In Outer Space”, primitive UK DIY ala Colin Potter/Storm Bugs and lush early Kraut electronics (Cluster/Harmonia et al). Much more melodic and inventive than much of the current synth/drone crowd Brother Raven tease heavenly melodies from oscillating synth patterns and glissing machine feedback to create the ultimate sci-fi trip rendered in glorious hi-fi sound. For fans of Mark McGuire, Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Alice Coltrane, Klaus Schulze et al. Comes with a bonus cassette album, Eagle Vision, featuring six more stoned jams."
~David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue
"Brother Raven's Jamie Potter and Jason E. Anderson explore their multitude of vintage analog synthesizers and keyboards with a blissful transmission for Belgium's Aguirre Records. It's their second vinyl offering in almost as many months, following the cosmic experience of 'VSS-30' with a more pastoral, tropically breezy drift of washed-out tones and chirruping mechanical organisms. 'Diving Into The Pineapple Portal' occupies most of the first side with an untethered strafe across bloopy analogue textures and Escher-esque synth spirals buffeted by ferric drafts until they float like spores in an artificial paradise. This definitely has all the hallmarks of vintage Kosmische, but the duo pull it off with that essentially sly touch that clearly avoids becoming mere cliche and operates more as a sort of mystical confession. 'Speaking Whale From My Canoe' opens the other side with an altered sense of shape and space, changing the tonal palette to glassier, more resonant sounds reminiscent of mid-70s Harmonia and Eno with an undercurrent of very softly burred bass rhythm, while 'Happy Astronaut' is happy to lie back and blow bubbles while looking at the moon. For us however, the biggest treat is the accompanying cassette, featuring a blend of more rhythm based experimentation and defined melodic structures while maintaining the potently woozy, unresolved effect of the vinyl. Nearly 1.5 hours worth of ready-made synth dreams in total, snap it up while you can.
~Boomkat
On VSS-30 LP
"Brother Raven’s vision of synthesized psychedelia encompasses a whole lot of weirdo form, giving the nod to early UK DIY electronics - The Normal/Robert Rental, Storm Bugs, Colin Potter et al - while striking out into more hi-fi deep listening environs via cosmo-jazz keyboards and devouring Kraut drones. VSS-30 is one of their most beautifully unnerving trips, with faraway morse code patterns flickering in the void while distant tectonics, doomy drum machines and haunted melodies dissolve into each other. Space is deep, brother."
~David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue
"Nice to hear a (relatively) hi-fi set from the anderson / potter duo, as their particular brand of sparkle-vectoring has heretofore largelymagnetic... Behold this shiny, round object with a straight eight of shorter numbers; the terminator still looms large, even when the two get into some almost “jackin’” zones... There’s a nice, diffuse automation to this stuff; just about as “hands off” as you get before things fall into the “cold, minimal” sphere, yet still retaining the by/of humans aspect of the sound-gathering process... one of my favorite recent synth groups, here hitting the big-time; highly recommended!!!"
~Keith Fullerton Whitman, Mimaroglu Music Sales
This LP stands as a nice contemporary companion piece to the recently reissued J.D. Emmanuel album from yesterday. Exploring Komische with the same sense of wonder and experimentation, the duo of Jamie Potter and Jason E Anderson construct analog space epics that foam with programmed rhythms and atmospheric sweeps. The duo have crafted small form epics for Gift Tapes and Taped Sounds who've released works by Oneohtrix Point Never, Uton, and James Ferraro and they slip in nicely amongst both those ranks and that of Digitalis' new synth stable. The album is limited to a mere 300 and sure to go fast but definitely running high in the echelon of analog essentials for 2010.
~Raven Sings the Blues
"These guys are a duo operating out of Seattle, each half an active member of the underground music scene by their own right. Their music is made using old synthesizers recorded directly to tape, then carefully edited into substantial, fully-realized synth-scapes that float somewhere between ethereal space music and more terrestrial, melodic work. It's been close to a year since I last checked in on these guys via their Nellie tape, also on Digitalis, and in the meantime the amount of synthesizer music being put to tape has about quadrupled. Brother Raven were head-and-shoulders above the crowd then -- their synth explorations always tight and focused where others were just twiddling away -- and that is only more so now. In line with their past work, there is always a steady pulse underlying the pieces here but the range, both in style and sound, is greatly expanded. The compositions are on the whole leaner -- stereo echo is used to great effect to give the pieces weight and width -- and the duo confidently move beyond the safe, hazy, new-age-iness of the moment. There are some welcome curve balls on the LP, a heavily rhythmic track with echos of early 90s dance music, a bubbling Raymond Scott tribute, the white-noise boulders that come crashing through the placid solar-tones of the opening track. Excellent work from Brother Raven here, doing what they do well while still pushing themselves in new directions."
~Raf Spielman, Eggy Records
"The outer limits of contemporary kosmiche and experimental synth music continue to be explored with a screen printed and hugely limited transmission from Seattle's hotly tipped Brother Raven. As a rite of passage, they've already released a handful of cassettes on local imprint Gift Tapes and the ace Taped Sounds outlet (home to Oneohtrix Point Never, Uton, and James Ferraro among others), before dropping these two sides of "space music with the positive-vibe ambiance of early new age". They also cite Inuit mythology and time travel among their influences, with slightly more discernable traits inherited from the early '80s synth music of J.D. Emmanuel. The duo of Jamie Potter and Jason E Anderson have a charmingly naive sound, wandering through an array of Multi and Micro Moogs, Polysynths and Yamaha keyboards recorded to tape, with the slightly unusual addition of a Roland SH-101 and SH-1, which we'd assume are responsible for the interjections of fragile proto-techno pulses which crop up in between their freeform strokes. Overall, the effect of 'VSS-30' is like progressing through an early 8-bit commodore game, eager to progress towards the next level, but happy to vibe off the dayglo graphics and sounds. The recording to tape adds that unmistakable analogue warmth that makes this one of the finer records of its kind to hit our racks this year."
~Boomkat
On Timewinder Tape
Spiralling cascades of 70s-style synth wonderment that reminds me of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra."
~BOA Melody Bar
"Excellent cassette on Lieven Martens’ label from a duo with a jones for the primitive electronica of 80s underground synth, electronics and tape music. At points they orbit the lonely sound of early Harmonia or even some of Mark McGuire’s more Kraftwerk-fixated work but there’s an alien, homemade quality to the sonics that is extremely appealing. Lieven compares it to some of Colin Potter’s early work and that makes a lot of sense. One to get lost in."
~David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue
On ITCZ Tape
Great new self-released cassette from this zoned Seattle duo, hand-numbered edition of 100 copies. Slow sunrises of keyboards married to wiggy 20th century avant electronics, the kind of fuzzy celestial melodies of ‘72 Sun Ra and a slow-burning atmosphere that is pure Cyborg.~David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue
"only the title (after an excellent digitalis outing) we’ve been able to stock from this seattle area synth duo (bonus’ jamie potter on alesis s4korg triton, and roland mt-32 & jason e. anderson on yamaha motif es6roland d50, and korg x5). already causing something a stir around the mms offices here due to their careful channeling of both synth library & brad fiedel/john carpenter-ish modes. as the synth music” scene begins to eat it’s own tail, these guys are inarguably in the forefront in regards to new directions to take it all in..."
~Keith Fullterton Whitman, Mimaroglu Music Sales
"2010 starts with a quiver; this is the second Brother Raven release I've had the pleasure of hearing, released as part of the excellent & most recent Gift Tapes batch. The aesthetic of Gift is spot on - elusive landscapes, submerged collages of dark colour produced to a high, consistent standard. Diving into the Pineapple Portal was one of my 09 highs, and we see similar synth perceptions here; playful, toying movements cut into 8 sections as opposed to Diving's 3. This is the main criticism to be made - too many cut-ups, not enough slow merging. Merging works. In this sense it reminds me of the Mark McGuire solo acoustic LP, which also saw a standout artist most acquainted with longer formations moving into the unknown territory of more 'normal' song lengths. That's not to say longform 'drone' (I use this in the broadest sense, you know what I'm getting at) can't ever be segmented in this way, it just generally sprouts zoning problems. Back to my main thrust: Itcz calls upon a few selected techniques and manages to apply minimal manipulation in producing what often sounds like field recordings played out on a synth - subjects could include forests, zoos and underwater hideouts. In reality it's a merging of these ostensible influences that sets the Raven apart in the new revival."
~Dialobewarriorz
On Nellie Tape
"It seems like more and more folks on the cassette tape underground are dusting off their old synthesizers and letting themselves go in the drift of mellow electronic tones. Not sure why that is exactly, but it makes me happy so I'm not too concerned. "Nellie" is really a treat because of the focus and restraint evident across its five tracks. The whole tape maintains a cohesive mood without feeling inert, and the compositions are all carefully put together in terms of tone and melody. There's something about the feel of the tape that reminds me of German synth stuff from the 1970s, but on the whole considerably less romantic and melodramatic, and definitely pre-New Age. Brother Raven are taking heavy cues from that era but their stuff has it's own place."
~Raf SpielmanEggy Records
"Brother Raven features Bonus'Jamie Potter & Jason Anderson doing some very convincing early 80's synth minimalism."
~Keith Fullterton Whitman, Mimaroglu Music Sales
LIVE mentions
"Brother Raven's music burbles and pulsates in a cosmic eternal now, unspooling fractals of clean-blooded analog-synth tones (or a convincing digital facsimile thereof) that ripple and disperse into that bright light filmmakers flash when characters cross from reality into dream/fantasy."
~Dave Segal, The Stranger
"Local duo Brother Raven (Jamie Potter and Jason E. Anderson) eschew their billmates' decibellicosity and strive for cosmic consciousness-raising, like many a highly evolved synth-sorcerer before them. Their cassettes Diving into the Pineapple Portal and A Sound Like Wailing Winds Is Heard (Gift Tapes) are primo chill-out soma, beatless balm that avoids crystal-clutching tritenessand achieves a Zenlike state of calm (sorry for the rhyme, but I swear on a stack of Alan Watts tomes that it's true). Creating music that tranquilly bubbles, sparkles, and drifts without inducing yawns or eye-rolling is terrifically difficult, but Brother Raven achieve this exalted condition. Their tracks belong both in the academy and in the temples of holistic health."
~Dave Segal, The Stranger
"...the duo had their analog gear out and brought back memories of the numerous releases of electronic music on Sky Records from back in the 1970's and 1980's. For those of you who didn't grow up with those around, I should explain that they put out LPs of gentle, melodic synthesizer music with experimental flourishes. The best known examples from their catalog would be Cluster and the first four albums by Asmus Tietchens. The emphasis here is drifting off into soundworlds, not the sequencer driven drivel of post-Krautrock Tangerine Dream. It is an area that seems to be getting explored more lately by the likes of James Ferraro from The Skaters and others. Brother Raven really nails the cosmic aspects of this stuff though."
~Eric Lanzillotta, Dissonant Plane
"Brother Raven are fairly new on my horizon, a local duo (J.Anderson & J.Potter), they purvey a stunning wash of uber spaced out cosmic synth worship. They seemed to take a wholly improvisational journey, navigating dense bass swells interspersed with thoughtful quiet parts. It was as if Klaus Schulze took a less conventional route through the Moog cosmos."
Kurt, ~Soccermom Ebonics
"Brother Raven are a couple guys from Seattle that make music from synthesizers that will take you on a dreamy journey through outer sea and inner space."
Andrew Lench, Slow Music Meltdown
"Seattle’s Brother Raven leads drifting undersea excursions through hypnotic blips and vast ambient washes."
~Impose Magazine