Published May 18, 2021
Western Canadian Renaissance man Jonny Dylan Hughes makes ambient music as BRANCHES and house beats as Slow Start. He s also occasionally himself.
In his new single under his own name the first since 2018 Hughes embraces more of an electropop soundscape. The new Bandcamp release Devastation is five-plus minutes of shimmering synths and drum machines. The timely lyrics seem born of the COVID-19 era s tribulations: Have you ever had your world collapse / Like the stress was charging you tax? Lines about salting food even though he can t taste it (and not knowing what year/month/day it is) feel extremely on the nose.
BRANCHES Returns with Cosmic New Single Keep Going
Hear the latest from Jonny Dylan Hughes
Published Jan 05, 2021Jonny Dylan Hughes has been releasing music under his own name in recent years, but now the Western Canadian polymath currently based in Edmonton has revived his project BRANCHES for a new video. Keep Going is a celestial electronic track, its droning bed of pillowy synth tones given a sense of forward momentum by a bloopy beat. In the final third of the track, the arrangement drifts off into the cosmos with brassy chords and burbling arpeggiators.
The whole thing is set to black-and-white footage of Los Angeles in the 1940s a haunting combo of futuristic music and retro visuals.