James Adrian Brown – Forever Neon Lights: Album Review

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In keeping with its aspirations, James Adrian Brown’s new album has discernible warm spaces, analog synth patches and simple percussion loved by Boards Of Canada.

It’s a pilgrimage which, despite the many distractions that people are confronted with, still resonates in certain quarters.

For almost 150 years the seaside town of Blackpool has played host to a famous light show, a vast installation which now extends in ambition and scope well beyond its humble Victorian origins.

Like children of many generations before him, a young James Adrian Brown was dazzled by the spectacle when  visiting, an impression so powerful that he later told classmates he believed the lights wrapped their way all around Britain’s shoreline.

Firstly though a little history: Brown became prominent first as songwriter and lead guitarist for screamo post-hardcore outfit Pulled Apart By Horses, a role for which apparently stagecraft-wise he possessed little regard for his personal safety.

That’s less of a good look as you head towards your 40s, and partially as a response to the mental health challenges caused by the pandemic, an opportunity for renewal of sorts presented itself in the domain of electronic composition.

A string of releases followed – latterly for the revered Castles In Space label – whilst further recognition arrived in the guise of a role as producer for Benefits’ sophomore album Constant Noise.

As unlikely as it might’ve sounded, the transition from making pure noise to pausing for thought had been made real.

When it came to recording his debut album, there was only place to return to. Using the illuminations as inspiration, the bulk of Forever Neon Lights was laid out in Blackpool, with Brown spending most nights on the promenade catching the ambience as well as its other sights and sounds.

This distillation is, he says, the realization of, ‘Me laying everything out, the things I’ve carried since being a child, the hopes, dreams, and doubts I’ve felt as an adult, and the stubbornness to see things through’.

Embodying those ideas in wordless music is always more difficult than it might seem, but the smudgy, titular opener has an oddly cosmic appeal, cinematically orientated drones made for some ancient Sci-fi TV program which never made it beyond the pilot.

Generator is more outward looking, a glitchy but melodic techno sketch that shares some DNA with early Autechre.

Whilst more austere, The Firing Range absorbs a spectrum from only the hardest, most distant points of light to be found.

In keeping with its aspirations, there are however discernible warm spaces too. On Poster Child, Brown moulds the analog synth patches and simple percussion loved by Boards Of Canada, even including sampled children’s voices.

Elsewhere, on Promenade the kinetic sensation creates a travelogue theme, rain falling on a window as the scenery passes by in a blur.

Forever Neon Lights’ centerpiece, however, is Sidestep, the original vision being of a first part meant to embody emptiness whilst the latter squares that as if the subject has successfully completed whatever rites are necessary to become whole again.

Being critical it, like some of the other tracks here, feel too brief to genuinely evolve and capitalize on James Adrian Brown’s obvious gift for atmospherics, but in total sum there’s more than a glimpse of an artist happy to take chances.

Forever Neon Lights is the sound of a pilgrimage that turned into dreams; for James Adrian Brown it’s been a long and unorthodox journey to get to this point, but at least there’s always been a light to guide the way.

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