Whose Air by Brasspire

Every inhale, every struggle for breath in this city, that’s where *Whose Air* began. It’s a sonic map, really, charting a path from the solitary cough of ‘Tunnel First Breath’ – you’ll feel that isolation in the lone breath loop from a midnight subway – to the collective roar of ‘Oxygen Riot,’ where two hundred voices, lungs full, demand their right to the sky. We built this album to feel like that journey, from suffocating alone to finding power in the shared pulse.

You’ll hear it in the way we wrestled these sounds into existence: trumpets singing through hot rosemary steam, then re-amped inside spinning laundromat dryers to get that raw, abrasive edge. Our drums hit cassette that spent a week buried under commuter rails, layering a truly gravelly hiss into the beats. It’s not about polished perfection; it’s about authentic grit. That timbre, like sandstone scraped against velvet, that’s the sound of this megacity, and the very real struggle for clean air, for power. When the bari sax surges, you should feel your gut muscles clench, your breath stall.

This isn't just music; it’s the rhythm of resistance. We wanted to dramatize how corporate smog and simple indifference steal our oxygen, piece by piece, and with it, our collective power. So, hard-bop horns clash with overdriven post-rock guitars throughout, not just as a sound, but as the friction of that fight. Each track was cut in a single take, preserving that spontaneous fury, that raw energy that comes when the moment means everything.

That chant, “Whose air is this?” – it’s more than a hook on the title track. It threads through everything, a question turning into a stadium-level dare, echoing across transit hubs because it’s a question everyone’s asking. And then there’s ‘Latch Lungs,’ the album’s gut punch. It kicks off with a minor-key brass scream, pure dread, but then it flips, suddenly, to a luminous major lift. That’s where the power shifts. Layered choir exhales become rhythm, beating against distorted guitar walls, showing how collective breath can drive goose-flesh momentum, how dread can be flipped into triumph.

By the time we reach ‘Borrowed Lungs,’ the circle closes. Rafael whispers, “Borrow my lungs for four bars,” just like he does before our shows, and you can feel the city’s ribs widening, collectively. This isn't just a record; it’s a call for a Breathwave era, an evolution of hard bop’s activist core repurposed for these congested megatropolises. *Whose Air* is heavy, it’s raw, it makes your chest cavity stretch and your eyelids sting, but it also lights a fire. It’s for anyone who’s ever gasped for air, for everyone ready to take it back. Give it a listen. Feel it.

We're Brasspire. We forge breath into sound. Horns punch, drums pound. Our voice isn't sung, it's exhaled raw.