The Philosophy of Velocity
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The Philosophy of Velocity is a 2006 concept album by the rock band Brazil. Many of the songs on the album are lyrical short stories and vignettes, focusing on themes of isolation, paranoia, anxiety, and the [supernatural]] with an emphasis on absurdity, dark humor, and camp. It has been recently hailed by critics as a crucial maturation and vital realization of Brazil’s vision and artistic approach, which combines a variety of genres, eras, and sound sources into a unique but recognizably signature style. It is the first Brazil record listing the band as a co-producer.
Concept
The Philosophy of Velocity is conceptually a two-layered work. The meta-layer focuses on an unnamed author trying to write a novel but suffering a severe mental block. This is alluded to in the opening sequence with the sound of typing over a delicate piano etude. The author eventually falls into bouts of paranoia and delusional psychoses, episodes of which are illustrated in several places on the album including the backwards speech between The Vapours and Cameo, the haunting whispers and absurd lyricism of Strange Days, and the disconcerting sub-harmonic frequencies used in The Remarkable Cholmondley Chute System. The second layer focuses on the songs as individual short stories or small vignettes, the subjects of which form various fragments of the author’s reality. The album ends as it starts, with the nameless author continuing to type away at his novel that will never be completed. Singer and lyricist Jonathon Newby said his major influences on the album were Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Mark Smith, Captain Beefheart, Bob Dylan, and the poetry of Edward Gorey.
Musically, Brazil strove to create a sound as haunting and ethereal as the lyrics and purposefully blurred the edges of the sonics to create an aural tapestry that would envelope the listener in colors and volume. Fridmann was instrumental in helping the band achieve the spacious and expansive sound on the album, borrowing from production values not in mainstream use since the sixties and seventies to create a warm bed of sonics reminiscent of cassette tape hiss, and pushing the EQ levels far above normal to harness a level of volume not heard in most current music.
Recording
The album was tracked on May… through…. And mixed from July…to …. At Tarbox Road Studio in Cassadaga, NY. Along with traditional rock instrumentation, the band used a wide array of non-traditional instruments, including grand piano, upright piano, Rhodes electric keyboard, Wurlitzer electric keyboard, Hammond B3 organ, timpani, concert chimes, glockenspiel, and Latin percussion. During the tracking sessions, the band would record with Fridmann for twelve hours, followed by another five or six hours of self-tracking. Guitarist Aaron Smith acted as second engineer, recording extra tracks of guitar, keyboard, percussion, and vocals until daybreak. A few inventive mic techniques were used on the album, such as a taxi dispatch microphone on the vocals, the use of Leslie on the keyboards and vocals, and the recording of certain guitar parts using a cigarette pack-sized practice amplifier.
The Single
Escape was chosen as the album’s single and was promoted to college airplay. The album’s only video was shot for Escape by Michael Grodner in Los Angeles and comprised a two-day shoot with volunteer actors and crew. The interior shots of the band playing were filmed inside the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Los Angeles. The rooftop scene was filmed on top of an artist studio in the warehouse district outside of the downtown area of the city.
Reception
The Philosophy of Velocity has been met with critical acclaim from many national print and online publications. All Music Guide called it “a natural extension of all that has come before, yet a giant step forward for the band.” Alternative Press says “even name-dropping…their peers can’t contain or adequately describe what they have crafted for their follow-up to 2004’s A Hostage and the Meaning of Life.”