RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 4, 2024
Saint State Street:
The Dynamic Collaboration of bryant terry and Joshua Gabriel
After more than two decades of friendship and numerous creative collaborations, artists bryant terry and Joshua Gabriel joined forces in 2023 to establish the creative collective known as Saint State Street. In addition to their joint visual arts projects, they are making music. Through their songs, they weave a tapestry of influences, seamlessly blending soul-stirring spirituals, opera, traditional blues, post-bop jazz, 90s hip hop, trap, acoustic, and electronic elements. Their compositions are captivating and delve deep into the human experience, exploring themes of history, memory, family, resilience, and personal growth. Every song resonates with honesty and authenticity, reflecting the individual journeys and experiences of both artists. Saint State Street serves as a testament to their roles as storytellers, healers, and unifiers. Their music effortlessly transcends boundaries, bringing people from all walks of life together through the universal language of melody and rhythm.
+ + + + + + + +
Everybody does a Leonard Cohen cover so i had to get in there. Created a spooky multi-layered half-time beat with 808 dissonant bass and recorded the vocals and guitar live. Brought the beat in slowly, a layer at a time. Wait for the piano... One of my favorite Cohen tunes, the original on his debut album from the sixties, and the hardcore punk version by the greatest Philadelphia band of all-time RUIN.
+ + + + + + + +
A musical collaboration with writer and activist adrienne maree brown. Lyrics and vocals by amb, music composed and produced by Joshua Gabriel.
"The Sabbatical Suite is a small taste of the many songs adrienne wrote while on a sabbatical in 2020, in a moment that was meant for rest, but ending up happening during a global pandemic and becoming a period of intense change, grief, containment, stillness, and growth. Joshua Gabriel, an old friend of adrienne's, sent her beats to play with and then encouraged her to share the resulting songs with the world. The songs were recorded in cell phone voice memos, mostly in a small studio apartment in Hawaii where she had to keep her voice down for elderly neighbors on either side, a containment that felt appropriate to the pandemic moment, and intriguing to emote within; the creators recommend listening on headphones.
The first song Toyin is an ode to Black Lives Matter activist Oluwatoyin Salau, murdered in June of 2020. Half of all proceeds from this project will go the Blackout Collective, which trains Black organizers in the kinds of action that Toyin so powerfully engaged in. You've Been Lying Again is an interpersonal reflection of the political conditions. A Story For Alexis seeded in a series of bedtime stories adrienne wrote for her sweetheart, then recorded as part of a project celebrating Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Holy Water is an erotic gospel/emo dirge about visceral longing."
+ + + + + + + +
File under lo-fi, psychedelic, alternative trap hop instrumental. This composition mixes a screwed down bpm and 808 bass with piano, synthesizer harpsichord, and vocal samples pitched way up to sound like digital angels. J-Mythos is the time traveling musical alter ego of Joshua Gabriel (2014-2022).
+ + + + + + + +