Brijean - Walkie Talkie (2019)

Brijean Murphy was born to make you move. Stepping out in 2018 as one of indie’s most in-demand pop percussionists, Murphy spends much of her time on back-to-back runs with a dozen different acts including Poolside, Toro Y Moi, and U.S. Girls. It’s a marvel that, somewhere in the whirlwind of the past year, she found time to collaborate with producer Doug Stuart to record their first communiqué to the world: the dreamy,
back-room disco of WALKIE TALKIE.

Combining Murphy’s upbringing heavily steeped in latin jazz and soul, BRIJEAN is a hypnotic and danceable new direction for Murphy, and a fine compliment to her contemporaries on the 2019 indie circuit. Equal parts dance production, organic percussion and melodic mantra, WALKIE TALKIE transmits Murphy’s essence perfectly. Murphy’s musical talents are family heirlooms: her father, percussionist and engineer Patrick Murphy, taught Brijean her first patterns on a pair of congas that she inherited from the late Trinidadian steel drum legend Vince Charles. Growing up in LA’s Glassell Park, Brijean was raised by a cadre of honorary aunts and uncles – a deep bench of jazz, latin and soul musicians in their own rites. This meant she grew up regaled by musical lore – larger than life tales of jazz luminaries, psychedelic trips and obscure cultural enclaves – sampling some of those family stories and weaving them into the EP.

WALKIE TALKIE is Murphy’s collaboration with producer Doug Stuart, who shares a background as a jazz, pop, and session musician (Bells Atlas, Meernaa, Luke Temple, Jay Stone). In marathon sessions at their intimate home-studio, wedged between touring schedules that rarely-overlapped, BRIJEAN formed. Murphy’s layered percussion and hypnotic, expressive vocals coupled with Stuart’s harmonic palette and intuitive production evokes 70s disco, 90s house, and sly pop sensibilities.