Apollo Brown Drops Lead Single “It Just Is,” Announces New Album

Detroit beatmaker Apollo Brown announces his new album “This Must Be the Place” and drops lead single “It Just Is.”

“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.

Stream It Just Is here. Pre-order Apollo Brown’s new album “This Must Be The Place” here: https://orcd.co/thismustbetheplace