What genre of music is this?

December 3, 2022 7:40 PM

I recently discovered some covers by a band named Brasstracks that were like nothing I'd ever heard before. There's this Mariah Carey classic cover of Always Be My Baby, Drake's In My Feelings redone and what I think is an original song, XO Tour Llif3. Is this a genre that exists, or just this amazing band?

Elements that I'm hearing:
* brass band, obviously
* hip-hop
* kind of... dreamy? I feel like I'm underwater when I'm listening to it, in the best way. Everything seems so smooth, but not smooth jazz smooth, I can't really explain it!

There's clearly a lot of "brass band remix of [insert popular song]" on YouTube, but that's not exactly what I'm looking for. For example, this different band's cover of Crazy In Love, doesn't hit the same spot. That one is JUST a brass band playing hip-hop, not the fluid/smooth/almost... distorted in a good way... style of those covers from Brasstracks.

posted by rogerroger to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

It's no genre that I know of, but you might want to check out Trombone Shorty and see if he leads you to anything else similar.
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:47 PM on December 3, 2022

It's a bit like "brass house", in the vein of Too Many Zooz (who defined/coined the genre term), and Moon Hooch (who they play with sometimes). They both cover a lot of ground, Too Many Zooz' original work leans a bit rougher but Moon Hooch has more jazzy/smooth stuff.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:15 PM on December 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

You might give Meute a look. Their cover of Royksopp's What Else Is There is pretty dreamy while also being a solid acoustic banger.
posted by subocoyne at 9:42 PM on December 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

I don't have an answer, but just want to say thanks for asking the question. I had never heard of them before this, and I'm loving it.
posted by COD at 6:35 AM on December 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

It's Future Jazz aka Nu Jazz. It's a combination of jazz, electronic, and funk.
posted by dobbs at 7:17 AM on December 4, 2022

I don’t know who else sounds like them but imo a lot of that dreamy underwater sound on the Drake cover comes from rolled of high end frequencies and warm compression (along with reverb), technically speaking. You can find it a lot in contemporary lofi beats (of the “to study and/or relax to” kind). That stuff tends to be very low tempo, but you might dig it for that same undersea feeling.
posted by wemayfreeze at 5:45 PM on December 4, 2022

You might find Meute interesting.
posted by bink at 1:23 PM on December 5, 2022

To me, it sounds like a light take on New Orleans brass band music, like this Soul Rebels Eurhythmics cover.
posted by umbú at 8:13 PM on December 5, 2022