This is a time capsule. In the summer of 1998, childhood friends Pigeon John and bTwice from Inglewood recorded their one and only album as Brainwash Projects — in Matt Wignall's Tackyland studio in Long Beach, on Ensoniq ASR-10s, through a vintage 70s 24-track desk. Soup The Chemist (formerly of SFC) mixed, Matt Wignall engineered. The album made noise in the West Coast underground and shaped the sound both artists carried into their later careers. Pigeon John went on to become part of L.A. Symphony — that Christian-influenced LA underground collective that also included CookBook (The Visionaries), Joey the Jerk and Flynn Adam Atkins. The credits read like a family album of the late-90s LA indie scene: Gr. Jsn Beits and Vibe as guest producers, Drunk Kings featured on "Speeding Porsches!," L.A. Symphony as the surrounding collective. The whole thing is dedicated to the memory of Marcus Irving, Julia Griffin and Loncee "Soda Saducee" Thompson — the original Brainwash Projects member from 1991 to 1997. This album appearing on Bandcamp now is not nostalgia marketing. It's preservation of material that circulated only limitedly in the pre-streaming era and had practically vanished. Seventeen tracks including a hidden track "Dedicated to MC Shan" — a bow that shows how deeply this West Coast duo's roots sat in New York rap history. The ASR-10 production sounds exactly like 1998: warm, crunchy, organic. No remaster tried to modernize it. Exactly right.
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