Add to playlist: Rian Brazil's Bjork-beloved sounds of Brighton youth and the week's best new tracks

"The Brighton-born producer, also praised by pop star Lola Young, is a master of earworms, which he weaves from the sample-heavy sounds of the UK underground (see his longtime collaborator, Fakemink producer Clearo) and the saccharine highs and bassy lows of his vocals. On first listen, you might mistake the huge range of his melodies for Auto-Tune, but this, impressively, is Brazil's raw voice, modulated vocally to achieve deeply vulnerable performances that set his sound apart from his rap-focused peers."

"Across his forthcoming Engine Heartbreak EP including drum'n'bass love-song Bullet Caught in a Spiders Web, the gospel-inflected Things 2 Make U Smile and the glitchy A Butterfly Was Born Brazil (his real name) creates a sonic world that is as addictively online as it is yearning for IRL contact. Amid the radio-style chaos of his production, which recalls Jai Paul's infamous 2013 Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) or the new-gen sounds of Brazil's peers The Sound Chalk Makes and the Twins, there are sonic relics and lyrical references gathered from a youth in the backend of England In Brazil's case, Hollingdean, Brighton."

"Here, we find the soul-inflected sounds of church, the happy hardcore played by a former raver mum, ripped MP3s streamed on the school bus through cheap headphones. The result is a sound that propels you through the present, while reminding you where you came from. In Brazil's words: a futuristic version of the grime-obsessed kid who grew up smoking ciggies on Barrow Hill."

Rian Brazil, a Brighton-born producer, is known for earworm melodies built from sample-heavy UK underground sounds and saccharine vocal highs with bassy lows. His wide melodic range may seem like Auto-Tune, but it comes from his raw voice, vocally modulated to deliver deeply vulnerable performances that distinguish him from rap-focused peers. The forthcoming Engine Heartbreak EP includes tracks such as “Bullet Caught in a Spiders Web,” “Things 2 Make U Smile,” and “A Butterfly Was Born.” His production mixes radio-style chaos with sonic relics and lyrical references from youth in Hollingdean, Brighton, including church sounds, happy hardcore, and school-bus MP3 listening. The result connects online addiction with a desire for real-life contact.

Read at www.theguardian.com