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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Letty Cole, Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes

Add to playlist: Rian Brazil’s Björk-beloved sounds of Brighton youth and the week’s best new tracks

A young man in a sweater vest standing in an underpass
Relics … Rian Brazil. Photograph: Lucien Parsons

From London via Brighton
Recommended if you like Jawnino, Fakemink, Jai Paul
Up next Engine Heartbreak EP released 20 May

Not many can say that Björk has played their track while DJing at the Venice Biennale, but, as of last weekend, Rian Brazil is one of them. The Brighton-born producer, also praised by pop star Lola Young, is a master of earworms, which he weaves from the sample-heavy sounds of the UK underground (see his longtime collaborator, Fakemink producer Clearo) and the saccharine highs and bassy lows of his vocals. On first listen, you might mistake the huge range of his melodies for Auto-Tune, but this, impressively, is Brazil’s raw voice, modulated vocally to achieve deeply vulnerable performances that set his sound apart from his rap-focused peers.

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