Apollo Brown Announces New Album "This Must Be the Place" Due Out July 8th, and Shares New Single "It Just Is"
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Detroit beatmaker Apollo Brown announces his new album “This Must Be the Place” due out July 8th on Mello Music Group. “This Must Be The Place” is the prolific veteran producer’s first instrumental project in 8 years! Along with the announcement, Brown drops the album’s lead single “It Just Is”. Highlighted by shimmering synths, the lo-fi Hip-Hop tune serves as a brilliant teaser for the upcoming album.
“This Must Be the Place” is a continuation of Brown’s celebrated 2011 album, “Clouds”, as well as a departure from it. “Clouds” was melancholic boom-bap made for the fall, the soundtrack to a ruminative walk through a leaf-strewn park beneath gray skies, but Brown’s new album “This Must Be the Place” trades somberness for warm nostalgia and glimmers of hope. Brown offers moments for reflective gratitude and portals of escape through new permutations of East Coast-rooted boom-bap, his drums hitting with concussive force as snares crack like ice on midwestern lakes.
Though Brown is a consummate and discerning crate digger, he sought different source material for “This Must Be the Place.” After soliciting compositions from ten trusted sound designers, Brown holed up in his basement home studio, looping, chopping, and deconstructing their work to create 21 wide-ranging productions. Thumping music box grooves (“Butter”) and wistful, jazz-imbued suites (“Nervous Goodbyes”) bump next to ethereal intergalactic funk, beats accented by synths that glint like stars shooting past psychedelic nebulae with drums seemingly sourced from colliding asteroids (“Escapism,” “Jupiter Gold”). For every instrumental that inspires reflection, another transports you above the clouds and to the cosmos. At every sonic turn, “This Must Be the Place” can remind you to appreciate living the life you imagined or push you as you navigate there.
In Apollo’s extensive catalog, knocking instrumental projects like “Clouds” (2011) and the noir-tinged “Thirty Eight” (2014) bump alongside acclaimed full-length albums with revered and elite veterans: Ghostface Killah (The Brown Tape), Ras Kass (Blasphemy), OC (Trophies), Planet Asia (Anchovies), Skyzoo (The Easy Truth), Stalley (Blacklight), and Joell Ortiz (Mona Lisa). On 2021’s “Lovesick”, Apollo adapted his sound for R&B and the velvety vocals of Raheem Devaughn. His collaborations always occur in the studio, as he cherishes the in-person synergy that yields each album’s cohesiveness.
Prolific Michigan producer Apollo Brown transposes the happiness he’s found in his career, family, and circle of friends into his new album. Brown is excited to release “This Must Be the Place” on July 8th via Mello Music Group.
Pre-order “This Must Be the Place”: https://orcd.co/thismustbetheplace and connect with Apollo Brown on his social media.