Venus II - Inside Your Sun

The UK has begun to fall in love with Venus II, the dream-team pairing of Jarrad Brown (frontman of freewheeling eight-piece collective Eagle & The Worm / Dorsal Fins) and Sydney-based producer Ryan Grieve (Canyons). Their debut single Inside Your Sun has been racking up airplay on BBC Radio 6, with Early host Chris Hawkins tweeting ‘this is proper epic style ravey dance’ and ‘we’re loving this, hope you do too!”. Today the duo have announced their debut record of the same name, produced by Grieve and set to be released August 19th.    The rush of single Inside Your Sun vividly marries Brown’s innate talent for song craft with Grieve’s deft production flourishes. Best described as an acid-soaked rave-up that takes cues from baggy-era Manchester and weaves it through string-tinged psychedelic-techno, the track was accompanied by a psychedelic music video on release. A giddy concoction of thumping techno, guitar heroics, horns, and video game bloops, Inside Your Sun fizzes from the outset, building into a flat-out psychedelic-confetti rave-up.    “I had this idea about suns and how each of us have our own life energy like a sun,” says Brown. “The song kept building and building and building.”    After the rush of the mid-journey peak, Inside You Sun devolves into a spacey acid house freakout laced with Brown’s cut-up vocals, showcasing Grieve’s knack for atmospheric dynamics and release.   “An anthemic Madchester pop-raver, [Inside Your Sun] meets at the intersection between the charts and the dungeons, sparring frenetic synths against an endless procession of euphoric hooks, with more than a few side-line spins towards the acid-holes of that hedonistic U.K. dance era.” – Rolling Stone   A chance meeting led Brown to Sydney-based producer Ryan Grieve, who runs Hole in the Sky records, a label known for discovering Tame Impala. With over ten years’ experience in the Australian dance scene, working at the intersection of dance music, indie-pop and immersive audio-visuals as one half of band Canyons and with recent project Heart People, Grieve saw Brown as a kindred spirit.    “We went with my aspirations to collaborate, try something new, and made a body of work that is tender, immersive and, I think, cool,” says Brown of the collaboration. “Ryan was able to break down what I was about and present these new ideas in a way that made them great.”   That evolution is crystallised on Venus II’s debut album, Inside Your Sun. Mixed by Chris Colonna (Bumblebeez), Inside Your Sun is a bold exploration of acid-soaked dance music, unbound by convention, and driven by raw, percussive-powered psychedelic-pop. From baggy-era indie rave to lashings of beach-dreaming Brit-pop - Inside Your Sun vividly marries Brown’s innate skill for songcraft with Grieve’s atmospheric electronic production and Colonna’s eclectic bass sounds.   Working collaboratively, the unlikely pair chanced upon the eclectic sound Brown had been searching for - a widescreen exploration of cosmic dance music, from fresh a pop perspective. So pleased with the results were Brown and Grieve, they anointed the partnership with a new name - Venus II. It’s also a document of Brown’s artistic transformation, and a document that Brown allows the listener into. “I wanted to keep the original mixes – done with Steve Schram in Melbourne – as part of the story. I agreed with Eagle And The Worm that these sessions would become available too, and also be part of the cd set. So we’ve got EATW in the room, Ryan’s twists and production, Venus II and my writing, all part of the release”.    Venus II allows Brown to approach his craft from a new, often challenging, perspective. “Some of the ideas and conversations within this album were out of my reach when we started,” says Brown. “We distilled our ideas- we made demos, we made new demos, we made beats, we made new beats.... Ryan rarely used the idea I thought would be the idea. Working in a new environment with a new person - you’re presented a set of choices and unknowns. You can’t be the old and familiar version of yourself - you become a new you. A product of your collaboration…”   For Brown his excitement about the project is twofold: the album’s themes of love and loss, cosmic relationships, rebirth and contemplative respite, mirror the path of discovery he took to make it. “I suppose Inside Your Sun is about getting to the heart of things, getting to the middle of a moment,” he says. “Or at least - the journey of getting as close you can get to it.”   “It’s fair to say this unlikely collaboration is really opening up an in-depth exploration of cosmic dance music. We can’t wait to hear what else they come up with.” – Tone Deaf