Premiere: Brass Box, ‘Waves’

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Brass Box (Photo by Angela Mastoris)
Brass Box (Photo by Angela Mastoris)

Sometimes the stars align just so. Ammo Bankoff and Neil Popkin have been friends for a long time — they originally met back in the day at Club Underground — and the bands in which she played (Tete, Black Flamingo) occasionally played shows with Popkin’s bands (War Tapes, Rituals, Dreamland). They’d never made music together, but a conversation at an Echo Park bar about a year ago led to the collaboration that would become Brass Box. The first single “Waves,” which purrs with the same dreamy, mystical magnetism as some of the singer-bassist’s former bands, is the result of hours of soundscape-building in Popkin’s downtown loft — and the addition of guitarist Mark Bennett (War Tapes, ARO, The Mercy Beat) and drummer Pablo Amadore (Rituals, Dreamland, Sleepmask, Suicide Club) to make a full quartet. Popkin, who’s producing, calls their lush compositions “a proper sound bath in both melody and noise,” a fitting description given the way “Waves” washes over you.

||| Stream: “Waves”