In his work as a Milwaukee firefighter, Jon Brown has seen his share of injustice and sadness in the city and his day job has influenced his art in Kill The Motherboard. The band consists of Brown and Jack Splash, a producer who has worked with hip-hop/R&B luminaries including Kendrick Lamar, Solange and CeeLo Green. Their debut album, The Legend of Picasso Jones, reflects some of the dark side of the urban landscape but in a more hopeful way than much of the competition filling mainstream black pop-radio’s playlists nowadays.
Although in Legend, Brown rephrases the soul’s struggle to do what is right (referring to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans), the album isn’t gospel thematically. The breadth and occasional grittiness of Kill’s subject matter precludes it from being strictly sacred music. But the diverse musical palette Brown and Splash draw from—spanning ’80s synth pop to sprightly soca (“Soul Of Calypso”) and back to the avant-garde soul—fits well with the eclectic sounds emanating nowadays from both African American churches and clubs. Rapping by Eric Biddines on several tracks complements Brown’s warmly strident tenor singing.
