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[00:00:00] From AI to endless algorithmic loops, the music industry is oversaturated. It can be difficult to listen beyond all this noise. But what if there are other ways to relate to audio beyond it simply being a product sold to us? You know, there's something so exciting to me about thinking beyond the format of the tiny white earbuds or beyond headphone spaces.

What other worlds and dimensions could we discover? I'm interested to know what people might know and how we might be able to gather and produce new knowledges. These are the questions underpinning the sonic essay of Vancouver-based musician, writer, theorist, and curator DeForest Brown Jr for this special episode of The Process.

From alternative modes of listening and live performance as a form of time travel, to the Black political economy of music and the platform conditions of [00:01:00] distribution, DeForest reveals some of the ideas generated from his one-month residency at Somerset House Studios in 2025. Drawing on his research project, Rhythm Analytics, where he explores electronic music at the end of the music industry, DeForest gives insight into his multimedia project, Synoptic Audio.

In a richly textured dialogue between sound and words, he shares his experience of returning to Somerset House Studios to perform live as part of Assembly 2026, and reflects on how we can reimagine making and listening to music.

I'm DeForest Brown Jr. I'm a rhythm analyst, writer, electronic musician. I was in residence with Somerset House about a year ago, studying and researching music inventory, so a lot of reading, record store [00:02:00] shopping, meetings, and I've been working towards a new performance based around these readings and records with a primary focus on: How do audiences relate to audio, and how do they relate to performers creating this audio, and how do we kind of flatten the space and live in the audio together?

Audio for me has a lot to do with a device and the way that sound moves through a specific object and is, like, amplified and spoken out of that object as opposed to sound, which is just kind of natural and in the world environment on its own. So, like, relating to audio is really, it's really specific to me because it requires, like, a kinda totem to hold the actual voice of a sound.

I'm more interested in the organic- metabolism of sound and working with, you know, a single hi-hat tone and just pitching it [00:03:00] up and down and seeing what kind of comes out of that. And mostly exploring the fact that music itself is lingual, like it is a speaking experience, hence the name Speaker Music, because it's music that speaks to you.

It's music that comes from a speaker. It's based mostly around this idea that music should speak. It should not necessarily be contained within an algorithm, but should exist alongside any kind of non-ornate sounds that exist in our environment. If one's a good listener, they're probably you know, you're hearing everything, you're hearing everyone, and I think there's a kind of empathy in that, like a overexposed empathy maybe that, again, just really attracts me to the idea of electronic music because there's something about listening to, like, tape hiss for an hour and really getting to know the nature of that hiss and how it might have harmonic qualities or timbral qualities that could be shaped into something else.

[00:04:00] Algorithmic mood listening is something that I think is very comfortable and very industry standard for, for a reason because, I mean, sounds can be very oppressive. They can be very distracting. But, you know, there's something so exciting to me about thinking beyond the format of the tiny white earbuds or beyond headphone spaces.

I think about audio processing a lot and how much audio I process artificially through, like, these canned headphones, but also in my lived environment when I take the headphones off, everything is super high def. It's so hi-fi, in fact, that I desire to get a four-channel ambisonic mic to record my own live set because the reality of hearing it isn't hi-fi enough.

There's a whole other world out there. There's other dimensions in sound that I think I just wanna take people through if, if you're willing to join and do the breathwork, you know, 'cause a lot of my live set comes a lot with, like, breathwork and thinking [00:05:00] through inhaling and exhaling and, like, the different inter-intervals of that as it relates to different rhythms that are played and, and also obviously my emotional response to things.

And the hope is that when I have an emotional response, people come with me or I go with them, and it's very reciprocal. So Synoptic Audio was a commission for the 2026 Assembly programming. Though I've been aware of Somerset House for a very long time, and I've, I've always wanted to experience it Somerset House found me, which is extremely exciting to think about.

I was playing a show at Cafe Oto, and they approached me about, about doing a residency, which is, like, super exciting because I just was playing a, just playing a show. And it's... No, it's been really great working with Somerset House Studios, and I mean, there's so many artists involved with Somerset House that ha- have had meaningful impacts on my [00:06:00] creative career, that it's...

And just, like, kind of creative identity, that it's exciting to even be within that space, and to start exploring something like synoptic audio as a possible, air quotes, "visual art." As much as it's a performance of this album that's been made, it's also meant to be an expression of my experience getting to know London, and releasing on a British label, and kind of acclimating to that environment, and knowing, and doing, like, a full rhythm analysis of the very environment that I and my music will be, like, situated in.

As a part of my residency, I spent a lot of time reading Henri Lefebvre's Rhythm Analysis, and Norman Kelley's Rhythm and Business book, which is an exploration of the Black political economy of music. Rhythm analysis is a possible diagnosis of modernized, industrialized everyday life by listening to [00:07:00] and perceiving the flows of time and the flows of capital, the flows of, you know, your day.

And, you know, and through understanding this, one can kind of see the playscript, if you will, of every, of everyday life, which , you know, may not be the most healthy thing sometimes to kinda like wake up to The Truman Show. But You know, and during dire times, you kind of have to to be awake. So I've been looking into rhythm analysis and applying that to the black political economy of music.

And I'm interested in the way that that works within the British framework because of the phenomenon of the hardcore continuum that collects many different types of music, particularly those that were imported from the U.S. and Jamaica into the British musical vernacular and industrial structure. That type of migration and that type of assimilation, it's always been really interesting to me in terms of how it builds like a [00:08:00] common language.

What happens when all of our interests become absorbed into a type of algorithm and a type of large language model that would then be used to produce content that would directly interest us and our identities and our individual interests? So there's kind of a feedback loop there and a rhythm to the business of fulfilling one's desire to express and consume.

I'm interested to know what people might know and how we might be able to gather and produce new knowledges. Artificial intelligence in relation to music, for me, has a lot of implications of just coming from a philosophical background because intelligence as a philosophical term is just about knowledge gathering and knowledge holding and knowledge sharing.

Whereas the artificial part in AI is what becomes kind of interesting because then you start having these questions of authenticity and what is true [00:09:00] information. And so this idea of making an air quotes live record that then can be performed live and recorded live and then like it just keeps like kind of feeding back onto itself is a sort of quite literal second order cybernetic exploration for me of what intelligence might mean and how we might make it appear to be or feel more natural than artificial.

So synoptic audio for me is being like that is what was happening. That is why this live thing sounds artificial but is live and was once live and will forever be live. And it just keeps, again, like feeding back onto itself and observing itself. We exist in a time where there's air quotes too much music.

There's too much artificial music. There's too much real music. And there's a there's this moment where I feel like people are having to kind of dig through the weeds to for the first time consider a canon, not for the sake of elitism, but actually for the sake of like having something to hold on to and a [00:10:00] real grasp of history, which has led me over to these ideas of techno vernacular expressionism.

So techno vernacular expressionism is a particular thought process that I've been following to kind of understand how we relate to audio and specifically how we relate to audio when it's being sold and so techno vernacular for me has a lot to do with filling in all the space of abstraction understanding all the crevices and all of the sort of conditions of abstraction and trying to figure out how to buffer these abstractions into some type of tangible real and then turning those tangible sounds into terms that can then produce more sounds words and sounds being a container for the inner world of one's mind and emotions is an invaluable resource that you know the glut of artificial intelligence music doesn't necessarily mirror so [00:11:00] in relation to kind of like rhythm and business and like techno vernacular expressionism this node of thought initially came to me when I was studying Juan Atkins and Rick Davis who were in Cybertron together and they had this thing they called the grid which was basically like a notebook where they wrote down different people places things and it all existed in this fictional world that was never realized but it was all inside of their their debut album enter there's something very meta aware about Cybertron and like this eventual cyber culture that didn't necessarily involve them but would later through social media like kind of resuscitate them into what I kind of consider to be a canon I'm simply interested in canons because there has to be a like a thread there has to be some kind of like bread crumb of truth like or at least that's my own like solipsistic desire for like control over over my [00:12:00] everyday life but when it comes to work when it comes to producing and relating to audio you know The canon just helps me imagine and understand what it is I'm relating to and why abstract hiss noises that, you know, come off of this particular 808 kick drum, like, like why that does something.

Why I think about, you know, 303s sounding like, like a guitar, you know? There's certain references and connection points between these sounds and different moments that I think are always flowing through my mind, and it's always kind of an overwhelming, like, sensory experience that I think completely embodies what it is I'm trying to do with Speaker Music, where the performances, the albums are a lot.

Like, they're a whole lot, but it's meant to be a kinda jazz of frequencies and a jazz of references and mediums and syllogisms. And through the performance for Somerset House, for Assembly, should unravel some narratives and some things in a somewhat neat package.[00:13:00]

Performing synoptic audio has been a really interesting experience because it's essentially replaying recordings that were once live recordings. When I'm playing music live, I'm always trying to make sure that other people are there with me. The, the sounds are very strange. A lot of times it's very personal.

It's all played very live, and I can get really, really into the into the space, and there's a real interest in trying to open up that experience and not have it be so, so in my own head. It's one of those things where I love hearing other people's sounds. I love thinking about those sounds and being... You know, feeling those sounds in physical spaces.

I think there's something interesting about getting a bit meta about electronic music or, or just music in general, and being a bit meta about the experience, and taking the fact that both the audience and the performer are on either side of a sound system. I can't ever set the conditions [00:14:00] totally. By recording in a live situation with audiences in the room, I can't control for the amount of audience chatter or rustling of the seats or, you know, all of these things become a part of the composition in a way that, you know, I, I could never program.

And that's something actually that Motown artists did a lot, was, like, use, like, crowd sounds in their recordings. And I've been really interested in using ambisonic mics in this way because it changes the digital field inside of software and inside of the mixing desk. Because the ambisonic mic will allow for a kind of reshaping of the stereo field in a way that, for me- should both enhance but also document the liveness as a recording that one can then listen back to in a standardized format.

It's just an amateur way of teleporting, an amateur way of time traveling or something. So that when a listener comes back to [00:15:00] that recording, it feels like they're there and not in this kind of like corny way, but in this very like way that liveness and nowness is a new type of musical register and a new type of notation.

And it becomes very, yeah, intertwined in this way that someone like Miles Davis was thinking about during the electric years where he's working with live musicians. He doesn't tell them what the final product will sound like. And then he takes all the recordings back to the studio himself and he mixes it down into something that they could not have ever imagined because they couldn't hear the other players.

And I guess in this case, the other players are the audience.

Thinking about sound as it can be contained as like a physical manifestation, even if you can't see it, is, yeah, the entire point of this very strange but like exciting to me like record. [00:16:00] The whole point of this is trying to like, is to make the recording alive. Electronic music is kind of that inherently, but there's something about the performance space that kind of complicates the idea of electronic music as like a kind of static experience where you're just kind of pressing a button and things are happening.

There's a liveness that comes with turning the knobs and pressing the buttons that is very musical for me. The word cosmo technic kind of comes to mind actually while I'm thinking about this, thinking specifically about philosopher Hugh Huey and his idea of how the cosmo is a technical device that we all kind of participate in and move within like a machine.

And it's like, again, like a machine, it is not a machine, but the cosmos is like a machine in that way. And yeah, the live experience for me is just always a way to kind of use the stereo field to open up these types of cosmo technical possibilities.[00:17:00]

You've been listening to The Process This episode is presented by me, Laurent John. Thanks to DeForest Brown Jr. This episode was produced by Tess Davidson. The executive producer is Eleanor Ritter Scott. The theme music is by Ka Baird, and the series is mixed by Mike Woolley. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.