Chapman and Brocker debut with their cinematic dream pop
For the past four years the Chapman and Brocker brothers have been writing and recording Dance of the Crazy Man. The two began their music careers with scoring a documentary for Best Hours of The Day in 2004, Brocker was twenty years old at the time and Chapman only eighteen.
Chapman and Brocker’s Dance of the Crazy Man is best described as cinematic dream pop. Their debut consists of careful arrangements, clean production, and heavy on the instrumentation. Listening to the album carries a similar experience of watching a well directed film, reminiscent of The Beatle‘s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, though with less psychodelia.
Chapman and Brock explain the development of the album:
“Instead of constructing incidental orchestrations to accompany our lyrics, our aim was to write compositions that would serve as the background to the stories in our lyrics. Whether it is the phantom like descending major 2nds in When The Lights Go Down, or the circus-like sounds of an inebriated family get together in Anniversary Party, our goal was to arrange the instruments and sounds to embellish the world of our lyrics.
The lyrics on this album were composed in a linear narrative. The stories and the characters (including the first person characters) are fictional or at least fictional representations. By using heavy symbolism with the characters and settings, and refraining from immediate metaphors, we tried to create stories that could be experienced rather than merely understood.”
Chapman and Brocker are developing short films and music videos for the songs of Dance of the Crazy Man… in between their music and cinematography studies. Unfortunately they won’t be able to support the album release for several months due to Brocker contracting Valley Fever.
Chapman and Brocker – Chimes (purchase at http://www.chapmanandbrocker.com/)