By Deuce

If you’ve never heard his name before, or just don’t know too much about him, there’s one thing you need to know, and not forget, about your man Les Brown.

Dude’s a serious artist.

Brown isn’t wasting any time, resources, or anything else on The Next One, the album he dropped earlier this summer. He comes in full thrust with the ineffable “One More Thing”, which is as big of an understatement of a title as anyone’s ever made. And, he doesn’t let up as he seamlessly traverses a gamut of genres, from dubstep and EDM to rock and even some down home funk, in moments.

The producer and musician appears equally at home programming music as he is playing it live, judging by the turnout on this collection of tunes. Before touting his virtues on the latter, however, it’s necessary to touch on his prowess with the former. Anyone listening to “Thing” can be forgiven for thinking that someone is seemingly just pressing all the buttons on a drum machine or synthesizer at random, yet doing so in a staccato rhythm, one after another.

It’s the busiest, most desultory work on the album, or that’s likely been released all year, for that matter. Granted, Brown finds time to focus on some sort of eastern sounding stringed instrument (which might easily be a variation of the guitar). But he grounds the piece in a dubstep type bass line and simply makes minds whirl with the scattershot, deluge of percussion that seemingly favors the  bell tree, of all instruments.

On “Picycle”, he proves he’s a true musician who can actually pick up an instrument or two (or three or four) and bang the you-know-what out of them. Hear those live drums? How about the groove of the electric bass that’s riding them tightly, hanging on for dear life? That’s some of Brown’s finest instrumentation on this album. And, just for kicks, he happens to throw in shards and shapes of sound on those synths, raining down aural artistry that’s not easily duplicated.

Moreover, he’s able to shift tempos, moods, and the feelings his music evokes. On “Daisy in the Wind”, for instance, he forsakes percussion and drums for a substantial portion of it, tinkering away instead on what could be an acoustic guitar or a synthesized one. It all just goes to show that the man does what he wants on this LP, which is how it should be.