Rise - Mansur Brown (2022)

Soothing, dreamy layers of electric guitar build up over a rumbling bass line and shuffling drums, making this one of my favourite songs in recent years

I remember so clearly when and where I discovered this song. It was the start of the summer in 2023. I was sitting in the same chair I’m in now, at the desk in my office, wearing the same headphones, feeling similarly reflective and heavy-headed late at night. I was writing about my day in my paper diary with a pen. It feels like yesterday; time has flown.

I’d been loosely following the work of Brixton-raised electric guitarist Mansur Brown since discovering him alongside elusive keyboardist Alfa Mist and bass player Rocco Palladino on Yussef Dayes’s 2018 Abbey Road performance of Love Is The Message (which I’ll probably be writing about soon). But I’d not yet listened to NAQI Vol. 1, Brown’s third concept album, released one year before. The deep red of the artwork caught my eye on his profile, so I played it from the start.

It’s all fire. But track number three, Fever, stopped me in my tracks. I rewound it once, then again. Then it was on arriving at the next song, Rise, that its creator entered into another league in my musical tastes, one of his own.

I don’t often cry tears. I wish I did more. But even more rare is being made to cry by hearing a song for the first time: one with no lyrics, one that essentially combines a bunch of electronic loops, one that makes me want to dance, too. A piece of music that somehow channels pain and hope all at once.

I listen to it all the time. Sometimes I put it on repeat while I write my diary, or at the gym, or gazing out of the train window. It is multi-purpose. A bit like Mansur Brown’s sound: jazz, rock, grime, metal, dancehall, ambient…and more. Only in London.

Just make sure you listen on proper headphones and go until the end, because the climax is worth the wait.

Enjoy.

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