One of the more organic (sounding) producers in the field of electronic music, multi-instrumentalist
Max Brennan works from his base on the Isle of Wight, a relatively isolated outpost in the middle of the English Channel. The solitude must undoubtedly accelerate his recording schedule, since during 1996-97
Brennan released a total of seven LPs under his three main aliases: the quasi solo acts
Fretless AZM,
Universal Being and
Maxwell House (many of whose releases also feature the work of
Brennan compatriots
Paul Butler and
Rupert Brown). The blueprint of all three projects are much akin, a locked-groove variation on deep jazz-funk, minus its earthy qualities and more indebted to the cosmic reckonings of
Sly and
George Clinton electro-funk with slapped bass and rhythm schemes borrowed from worldbeat.
A painter/decorator and veteran of several live funk bands before he emerged as a producer in 1995 with
the Fretless AZM project,
Brennan recorded several EPs plus the debut
Fretless AZM album
From Marz with Love during 1996. He had already debuted the spacier, more downtempo
Universal Being project with two LPs recorded that same year for
Holistic (Holistic Rhythms and
Jupiter). Before the end of the year,
Brennan had released
another album by
another project, the self-titled debut for
Maxwell House on Peacefrog Records. The year 1997 brought two more
Fretless AZM LPs,
Astral Cinema and
Distant Earth, as well as the second
Maxwell House album. In 1998, he unveiled a new pseudonym for Holistic -- his own.
Max Brennan's Alien to Whom? was released in June 1998, just two months after the fourth
Fretless AZM full-length in total,
Oceans of Light.
Brennan also released EPs for Beau Monde as O.H. Krilll and for Phono as Cide.
Millennium Butterflies, again credited to
Fretless AZM, followed in early 2000.
–
John Bush, Rovi