Brazzaville | East L.A. Breeze

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Pop: California Pop Rock: Folk Rock Moods: Mood: Dreamy
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East L.A. Breeze

by Brazzaville

A look back at L.A. in the early 80s as seen across many years and a wide ocean.
Genre: Pop: California Pop
Release Date: 

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  Song Share Time Download
1. Peach Tree
2:39 $0.99
2. Star Called Sun
3:41 $0.99
3. East L.A. Breeze
3:18 $0.99
4. Mr. Suicide
3:19 $0.99
5. 1983
3:51 $0.99
6. Jesse James
3:48 $0.99
7. Madalena
3:44 $0.99
8. Bosphorus
3:18 $0.99
9. Ugly Babylon
3:04 $0.99
10. Taksim
3:07 $0.99
11. Blue Candles
3:29 $0.99
12. Morning Light
4:21 $0.99
13. Lena
3:46 $0.99
14. Lazy Boy
2:27 $0.99
Downloads are available as MP3-320 files.


Album Notes

"dark, sophisticated pop from one of L.A.'s most accomplished new bands. Think of Brazzaville as vagabond pop for fans of Morphine, Tom Waits, Spain, Leonard Cohen and Tindersticks."

-Neil Strauss,


…Brown's smooth, unhurried tenor supplying an offhand sort of Parisian cool, Brazzaville is the band you might expect to find at the end of the line in The Night of the Iguana.
… one gets the feeling the band would feel just as comfortable moldering in a dark bar where ruined women and remorseful felons shed their names and soak their memories in grain alcohol and tropical rain. The 11 songs found on last year's Rouge on Pockmarked Cheeks are, like the album's title, soft and sad, and tinged with a weary sort of sex appeal.

-Silke Tudor

TIME OUT, New York

The combo’s sound could be described as Tom Waits with all the gravel removed or Prefab Sprout in a deep depression.
…it’s ideal environment would be a shabby equatorial seaside bar in the early hours of the morning, sand blowing in the door and the sun rising over the ocean. It’s music for not just drunks but lonely, traveling drunks- a set the group romanticizes.

-Robin Edgarton




4.5 out of 5 stars


It turns out they're a Barcelona-based group
with international appeal led by L.A. native David Brown. While critics
have compared them to Tom Waits and Morphine, to me they are most
reminiscent of the "Golden Brown"-era Stranglers. Deliciously melodic
and lushly produced, it's somehow both sad and sexy, and sounds like the
way getting drunk on wine feels.
… everyone who hears the record--from Bust's tattooed interns to my mother, asks who it is.

-Debbie Stoller


Rating: 4.5

Brazzaville is surprisingly
minimal. Sounding more akin to dreamy 60s rock and pop than to anything
that’s been made in the last twenty years, the band somehow remains
shockingly relevant and new-sounding. Vocalist and mastermind David
Brown’s dreamy, wistful voice soaks through your soul like few can.
… Enter Brazzaville, my friends. It truly is a wonderous place and you may
never want to leave.

-Ben Rice


"Brazzaville is one of the hippest and most exiting experiments to come down the pike in a long, long time...few are able to articulate the dizzying, dislocating changes of 21st century globalism quite as eloquently as Brown. Brazzaville is an intuitive, impressionistic take on our shrinking world where themes of isolation and loneliness are at odds with the promise and allure of easy international transit."

-Tom Pryor, Senior Editor


cinematic mood music with seamless layering - an album of quiet and precise details"

-Steve Klinge


"The disc is an absolute delight. Imagine a grainy, low thrum somewhere between the late Morphine and post-Asylum Tom Waits, with an aggressively po-mo dispassion for tossing in various world musics: a little samba here, some Far East exotica, a fado feel- whatever Brown's muse dictates."
-Jackson Griffith, PULSE


"The music sounds old, as if it's spitting out of a transistor in an empty third-world airport in 1967."

-Nicole Darling



to write a review

Christopher Szemraj

Resonator and soul dust remover
Maybe they have not invented teleportation yet but while listening to David and his friends you will find yourself drifting trough time and space of your memories and imagination. Vivacious, pure sound of life lived, tried and tasted. If you have been there you will recognize it as true and genuine because Brazzaville has been there too. That is why this music resonates so well with the heart.

Jeff Komisarof

Brazzaville continues to evolve with a poetic and evocative bunch of songs from another world.

Greg C.

More great tunes by David Brown
I had the privilege of seeing David Brown perform live in Milwaukee in April 2007, with two backing musicians, and his set included most of the songs on this album, along with many others. The material held up very well with minimal accompaniment (mostly just nylon-string guitar, stand-up bass, and drums), and it would've sounded fine with just guitar and voice. That's the mark of a really good songwriter, and this is David Brown's fifth album full of top-notch songs under the Brazzaville name. If you like one of their albums, you will probably like them all. This one continues with Brown's favorite themes, as the songs are mostly about people who are living at the edges of society, although this time, there is a greater emphasis on autobiography. For the most part, the songs are midtempo or slow, but there are two rockers, "Star Called Sun" and "Blue Candles," that feature driving electric guitar riffs. "1983" is another uptempo track that captures the feeling of being a teenager in L.A. at the time, with its references to riding the bus, swimming in the ocean, and "girls in death rock pantyhose." "Taksim" is one of the most striking songs, featuring a gorgeous piano riff and solos by trombone and violin. "Morning Light" ends the song cycle with the welcome sound of a female voice: "It's been a long time since I've seen the morning light/It's been a long time and that's alright." The two bonus tracks are just what bonus tracks should be: songs that don't quite fit the theme, but are similar enough not to be jarring, and way too good to be left unreleased. You really can't go wrong with Brazzaville, and if you're just getting curious about them, "East L.A. Breeze" is as good a place to start as any.