HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE – Book of sound

LEAD THE WAY “This goes way back, to before Hypnotic; originally it was purely a vocal track.”
PURPLE AFTERNOON “The bassline is a riff that’s been around for years. Each song on the album is about a different time of day – this is for mellowing out when the sun is setting.”
KEPRA “Kepra is the Egyptian name for the scarab beetle that was placed on the Pharoah’s crown, and represents manifestation – that’s Yoshe singing the treble line.”
MORNING PRAYER “This was literally our morning prayer when we were kids. A circular drone around the core note of F – it’s to give you stillness – and the core around which the album rotates.”
NOW “We wanted to write a Phil Cohran style song, re-creating his format as a writer. He taught us that all music is now-music, of the moment, never the same.”
SOLSTICE “Solstice is a celebration of the earth’s most precious day. That’s our mother Aquilla on vocal. The track is inspired by the old spiritual: ‘Ezekiel saw the wheel away in the middle of the air’.”
MIDNIGHT “Inspired by when our father used music therapy instead of methadone to fight the heroin epidemic that hit in the 1960s. The trumpet line is our father’s, and Aquila’s vocal is inspired by Ella Pearl Jackson, the incredible singer who worked with our father.”
SRI NEROTI “Sri was our father’s yoga teacher, with the most amazing ability to manipulate his body. The concept here is mind over matter. That’s our mother Maia on piccolo.”
HEAVEN AND EARTH “A tune in a Chinese mode that goes back to when we had a gig in Chicago on New Year’s Eve at the time of the millennium and everyone was a little uptight. Clouds are moving across the sky, a storm is coming!”
SYNAPSIS “This is Rocco’s tune about the neurology of sound. Synapsis is how the brain communicates with the body.”
ROYALTY “Huda’s tune. Huda is short for Yehuda, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the king of kings. We spent a long time trying to transfer Clef’s synths part to the horns but in the end left it in – the right thing to do.”