James G Brown

James, in his own words is “a grumpy 37 year old guy from the East Midlands (Yo Derby!)”. He has been in Manchester for 8 years now. He is a crate digger who still skateboards occasionally and works in a small visualisation studio in the Northern Quarter with 7 other people. ‘Our Studio’ partners with architects to bring their imagined buildings, spaces and designs to life. He also likes to dress as an automated humanoid called Robbie.

What influence does music have in your life as a creative?:

Music helps me at all times of the day. It helps me wake up, it helps me go to sleep and it gets me through the hours in-between. The music I mostly listen to is perfect for almost any situation. I can use it to drown out everything else when I want to crack on and focus, but at the same time the same song/album/composition can sit in the background and not draw my attention if I just need something to fill the space. Brian Eno sums it up when he talks about his well known album Ambient 1: Music for Airports where he says it was created to:  “accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”  But on the flipside I will play some types of music which will match the exact mood I am in. So maybe it’s some Japanese noisecore (Melt Banana) if I am feeling grumpy, which is quite often, or maybe if I don’t really want to think about the music and deconstruct it which I do so often, I will put some pure pop on (Girls Aloud’s Chemistry LP springs to mind).

I find it very hard to write about the music that I love as over my life the obsessions I have had have varied so much (French music, Dub, Noisecore, Doom, Drone, Pop, Classical, Math Rock etc etc etc etc) and they all merge together to form my own back catalogue of inspirations and moods. These all then merge and entwine together as you follow producers, artists, engineers, publishers and so on…

Tell us about your playlist:

So firstly the name of the playlist. I guess this is a mixture of what I assume comes to people’s minds when I utter the words ‘Neo-Classical’ to people if I am trying to describe the type of music I am addicted to. I think I have only said it loud a few times and that was enough. I tend to just say ‘Ambient’ or ‘Drone’ now. It is also the thought that has come to my mind when I am sat at an ambient gig and some of the militant drone/ambient fun hoovers shush me and give me daggers for whispering to my friend if they are enjoying the night. Yeah I understand that the music/sounds are minimal and there is lots of space and silence in between the notes and you want hear ‘just how fucking loud that silence is and drink it up’ but I’m pretty bothered! I didn’t stand up with an airhorn and let her rip. I just whispered to a friend. Can you tell this has happened to me more than once at these type of gigs?

Anyhoo, my playlist is simply a go to of tracks that I rely on for all of the above. A lot of the tracks are linked by the artists, record labels but some are just amazing tracks I have found on my searches. Some may find the playlist hard going, some may find it of interest… just give her a go and see what you think and if I see you around come over and give me a shush.