“Perhaps the most diseased justification the artist can give of his profession,” writes philosopher and musician Henry Flynt, “is to say that it is somehow scientific.” Disillusioned with the dense seriousness and intellectual abstraction of avant garde art, Flynt sought a more playful, intuitive style of creation that reconnected with the immediate experience of fun. The concept, which he named ‘brend’, runs off the fulfilment derived from simple action, the pleasing physicality of writing or running or playing guitar without any preconceived notions of intent or meaning.
Disheartened by slow, self-doubting process of traditional songwriting and recording, Philadelphia guitarist JR Samuels (Yowler, Friendship) has returned to Flynt’s philosophy for his debut record, suitably titled In Brend. “All recorded sound is fraught with decision” Samuels explains in an accompanying essay. “For this album, I opted to record a guitar in a room with two microphones, no overdubs, and (more importantly) no rehearsal. What I hoped to capture was the raw workings of my mind.”
The result, to be released on Dear Life Records, is an eight-song album of improvised guitar that exists for no purpose beyond enjoyment and intuition. Ambitions are dropped, artistic ideals and intent left behind, the songs allowed to flow. If influences creep in—Samuels says he hears glimpses of Neil Young, John Fahey, Wendy Eisenberg, the theme from The Godfather—then so be it, but any connections are purely accidental, subconscious. In Brend is purely about the joy of the moment, the “‘just doing’ of playing a guitar.”
We’re delighted to share the first single ahead of the album’s release on the 16th August. ‘In Brend 2’ is a perfect way in to the JR Samuels interpretation of brend, a track that waxes and wanes with patient flow, the small scurrying notes set amid a wider, perhaps more important silence. The result is something that feels organic and alive, playful not in the ironic sense but rather that of the natural world, the way birds sit and dart and flutter with no purpose beyond that of being able, of being alive.