Mr. Lif & Brass Menazeri Announce New Album, Share 'Crypt of Lost Styles'

It was something that had never been attempted before, a sound wholly new and original, and to everyone's great surprise, it worked! In winter 2011, underground hip-hop legend Mr. Lif was invited to perform at the Seattle Folk Festival. Lacking a band, the festival organizer brought up San Francisco Bay Area Balkan brass band Brass Menažeri, reasoning that the brassy backbeats and breakneck speeds of Balkan roots music would be the perfect counterpoint to Lif's intricately rhythmic rapping. Lif and Brass Menažeri came together in rehearsal improbably in a coffin factory in Seattle and the collaboration clicked almost immediately. "We were hearing something that none of us had ever heard before," Lif says, "and the whole session felt like an epiphany." "We walked away from that first rehearsal with a set of music that we knew would be powerful and different," says Briget Boyle of Brass Menažeri, "crossing boundaries that we assumed would stand in our way. But we blew those boundaries out of the water." At the festival, they played off each other beautifully, Lif storming the stage to the clashing dissonance of Balkan brass music, the tuba pumping out something akin to old-school boom bap hip-hop if it had been built in the old Soviet bloc. Even more surprisingly, the collaboration sparked a lifelong friendship between Lif, Brass Menažeri vocalist Boyle, and arranger Peter Jaques. Lif moved in with them in the Bay Area a month later and for the next year they worked on and off on an album that would showcase this new sound they'd developed. Working with Brass Menažeri trumpet player Eric Oberthaler, who had extensive experience creating electronic music in the Bay Area under the name eO, the new album, Resilient, took final form seven years later. Finding a like-minded partner in Los Angeles record company Waxsimile Productions, a label that brings powerful musical performances together with vinyl and analog technology, Resilient is slated for release on November 3, 2017.

Though the collaboration sounds entirely natural, it was a tricky process to integrate the non-Western polyrhythms and frenetic beats of Balkan and Romani brass band music with American hip-hop. Briget Boyle, Peter Jaques, and Eric Oberthaler of Brass Menažeri worked on a collaboration method based on live-remixing, slicing and rearranging repertoire on cue, and bringing up or looping various sections of the band. They almost had to develop a new language as they brought two very different traditions together. Lif, for his end of things, demonstrated an even more relaxed flow than usual, likely a result of his comfort recording with friends and housemates for this project. The collaboration gave Lif a new lease on music and a new outlook as well. Following an album release in 2009, he'd retreated from the music industry after dominating the early aughts' "backpack rap" era with friends and collaborators like El-P of Run the Jewels, Aesop Rock, Murs, and more. "I was particularly open to learning new things and having new musical experiences at the time," Lif explains. "Working with Brass Menažeri caused me to immerse myself in a completely different soundscape than what I was accustomed to and it was extremely exciting and inspiring."

This collaboration between a veteran of underground hip-hop and the creative visionaries of Brass Menažeri marked Mr. Lif's return to form, and his recent albums have garnered national praise. Resilient is a testament to the hard work that goes into perfecting a unique vision and the power of music to bring different people together.

CD preorder: https://www.amazon.com/Resilient-Mr-Lif/dp/B0755384ST/ref=tmm_acd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1505429215&sr=8-13

LP preorder: https://www.amazon.com/Resilient-Mr-Lif/dp/B07556DFR8/ref=tmm_vnl_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1505429215&sr=8-13

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