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Brothertiger

Brothertiger Music

When I first realised that there are musicians that compose, record and produce music at home, and then publish their music on the streaming services and online stores and eventually someone apart from their family and friends listens to them… well, it was a game changer for me. Why don’t do the same? Well, I’ve been doing music for several years now and I had stopped it because my mental framework was built upon the standards of the classical process: make a band, spend time writing an EP to promote the album, send it to publishers / reviewers… get to play live, promote yourself and… well you know, all this stuff that makes you forget about the fact that you are actually making music.

Then, at some point, I discovered Chad Valley (more on him in future reviews) and even went to a live concert here in Razzmatazz, Barcelona, pre-covid times. That man was writing his own music ALL himself and playing it live ALL himself. Ok… wait wait. My last gig was on August 2013 and then I took a “musical rest” until Always East started… and here we are now: a new framework for “making a career in music” exists and it suits me completely. While I took a rest from the “music scene”, actually it changed completely. Some great musicians are already embracing this way of making music, and even making a small living out of it. For example, Brothertiger.

He’s been around for a while, as far as I see on his Spotify timeline. Let’s take a look at the song that introduced Brothertiger to me. Our matchmaker was “Spotify recommends you”, of course. That song is from 2011 and is called “Evening Glow“. You can listen to it here. You may say: “it sounds dark”, “not well produced”, “strange”, “it sounds like it’s being played behind the wall”… And that’s true. But somehow, that song was in loop some days in my player.

Then “In my mind” was the next song to be played in my headphones, at some point, by the algorithm. This song even has a video:

Then, if you take a look at the timeline of Brothertiger’s releases, he comes out with a funny and good revision of Talking Head’s “This must be the place (naive melody)“. And after some more releases, he writes the album “Out of Touch” in 2015 and it all starts to get serious. That was a chill-dream-whatever-pop masterpiece. One of his most even played songs (“High tide“) is from this album. But my favourites of this album are the happy “Fall apart” and the more introspective “Engulfed“.

But Brothertiger did not stop here, of course. He took a risk that… oh man, not everybody is brave enough to take: revisiting Tears for Fears’ “Songs from the Big Chair”. Big balls there, Brothertiger. Tears For Fears and specially this album is maybe one of the masterpieces of all the times and eons. Brothertiger is a brave man, who even writes a blog claiming Italo Disco. Goodness me! I’ve always listened to Italo Disco music logged out of Spotify in order not to mess the algorithm and to hide my secret from the world. What a mistake! Long life Italo Disco 🙌 🕺

Let’s go back to Tears For Fears. Brothertiger did a very personal revision of the album. You may like it or not, but a fact is a fact: it is 100% Brothertiger. When you get to have “a particular sound”, you’ve reached the Olympus. Congratulations, John Jagos (Brothertiger’s name). He takes Roland and Curt to his home and serves them their own cake baked in John’s oven using his own recipe. No, he has not even tried to stick to the original recipe written by Roland and Curt, no. He is not a coward. The result, for me, is great, despite not superb. I would not have dare to revisit such album. But great respect for those who dare.

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Brothertiger gave his piece of cake to Roland and Curt, and they loved it. Source: TFF Instagram

Then “Fundamentals, Vol. 1” was out and I’m sure that’s something more personal, some ideas he wants to develop further (guessed by the “Vol.1”, maybe?). The album is instrumental, no voices at all. Great music but misses the touch of John’s voice. It’s like… “out of touch”.

And then, when we already lived deep in pandemic times, some light was thrown above our heads. “Paradise Lost” was released in 2020 and it’s again a masterpiece of (chill-dream-whatever) pop. As my blog’s headline says, taken from Zappa, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, so hey, take a listen to the album and allow me to present you my favourite track of it: “Swing”. Oh man, that choursed guitar!

¿Do you remember the first song I said, “Evening glow”? All the mid-hi frequencies that were cut there are thrown into Swing’s chorus.

Although “Swing” may seem a catchy-tune, Brothertiger decided to release “Livin'” as the single, so here it is, the official video:

Brothertiger is, of course, active and writing new music constantly. Don’t forget to check-out his Livestreams on a regular basis. 2 hours of non-stop music for you pleasure: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS0Y_QCJI9CxT7LsMtBHyJpk13dBUk2-Z. Just put them as a background while you are working or whatever. Superb.

Long life Brothertiger!