Apollo Brown Releases Animated Music Video For 'Kite Strings'

Prolific Michigan producer Apollo Brown has unveiled the music video for "Kite Strings" off his newly released album This Must Be The Place, out now on Mello Music Group. This Must Be The Place is Apollo Brown's first instrumental album in 8 years. For the veteran beatmaker, the new album is a self-reflection in beat form over his 15-year career working with artists including Ghostface Killah, Danny Brown, Joell Ortiz, Roc Marciano, Stalley, Raheem DeVaughn, and many more. Watch the animated "Kite Strings" music video!

A master of melancholic productions, Brown pairs cavernous drums and striking metallic hi-hats with spooky choral vocals and shimmering keys on "Kite Strings." The result is dark and fantastical with glimmers of joy, an artful encapsulation of the fall that could double as the score to a Ray Bradbury adaptation. Directed by Uzair Ahmad, the spooky animated video moves between ultra-modern and alien worlds via flashes and streams of vibrant colors and psychedelic patterns, a pair of disembodied hands orchestrating the journey. It's a visual metaphor for This Must Be the Place, where Brown sonically guides listeners to uncharted sonic territory.

Recorded over the past two years of the pandemic in his home studio Brown Study, Apollo Brown transposes the happiness he's found in his career, family, and circle of friends into his new album, This Must Be The Place. Brown explains the meaning behind the title, "It's that peaceful place in your existence where you've always dreamt of being, the attainment of certain emotional, physical, and spiritual elements that make you whole, and being so comfortable with life, that you could sit on the edge of a cliff and fly a kite."

The creation process for this album is especially unique when compared to Apollo Brown's previous work. Highly-revered for digging in the crates and his traditional sample use, Brown chose a different method for making This Must Be The Place, pulling from compositions by some of his trusted sound designer colleagues. Brown explains, "I wanted to craft this album out of modern instrumentation. The result is just what I wanted." This Must Be the Place is a continuation of Brown's celebrated 2011 album, Clouds, as well as a departure from it. Clouds was melancholic boom-bap made for the fall, the soundtrack to a ruminative walk through a leaf-strewn park beneath gray skies, but Brown's new album "This Must Be the Place" trades somberness for warm nostalgia and glimmers of hope. Brown offers moments for reflective gratitude and portals of escape through new permutations of East Coast-rooted boom-bap, his drums hitting with concussive force as snares crack like ice on midwestern lakes.

For every instrumental that inspires reflection, another transports you above the clouds and to the cosmos. At every sonic turn, This Must Be The Place can remind you to appreciate living the life you imagined or push you as you navigate there. Brown concludes, "It definitely encapsulates my gratitude for my career, family, friends, supporters, and the growing world around me."

Stream This Must Be The Place: https://orcd.co/thismustbetheplace

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