Speaker Music

New York-based theorist, journalist, curator, and multimedia artist DeForrest Brown, Jr. describes his Speaker Music project as "a digital audio and extended media praxis." The project takes inspiration from urbanist philosopher Henri Lefebvre's essay collection Rhythmanalysis, as well as British-Ghanaian cultural theorist Kodwo Eshun's notion of the "chronopolitical." On releases such as 2020's Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry and 2023's Techxodus, Brown combines jazz improvisation and ever-mutating electronic beat sequences with spoken passages addressing subjects such as race, class, and social/economic structures. Originally from the Deep South, DeForrest Brown, Jr. relocated to New York during the early 2010s. Since then, he has presented work at galleries and institutions such as MoMa PS1, Cafe Oto, and Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, in addition to writing for Afropunk, NPR, Artforum, FACT, and others. In 2017, he was the inaugural Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow at New York's Issue Project Room. Brown has collaborated with artist and musician Steven Warwick as the "cataloguing space and focus group" Elevator to Mezzanine, and worked with Kepla on the 2017 LP Absent Personae and 2018 deadpan comedy mixtape The Wages of Being Black Is Death. He also became a representative of the "Make Techno Black Again" campaign in 2018, composing a mix centered around the history of Detroit techno in conjunction with the campaign's line of hats. The first Speaker Music album, of desire, longing, was released by Planet Mu near the end of 2019. Sublime Language of My Century, a live collaboration with Bergsonist, appeared in early 2020. The live recording processing intimacy and EP Percussive Therapy soon followed, and Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry was digitally issued by Planet Mu on Juneteenth, followed by a vinyl release with bonus material. The mini-album A Bitter But Beautiful Struggle was issued by PTP in November. The digital EP Soul-Making Theodicy appeared in 2021, and Brown published his first book, Assembling a Black Counter Culture. Techxodus arrived on Planet Mu in 2023, featuring artwork by Abu Qadim Haqq, who created the iconic imagery for Detroit electro duo Drexciya. The album functions as an epilogue to Brown's book, as well as an extension of the Drexciya mythos.
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