World Cup is the solo project of Boston based musician and sound engineer John Brown. World Cup’s complex compositions have seen previous releases on the labels Driftless Recordings and Squiggle Dot, as well as live iterations where Brown’s arrangements have been performed with other musicians. World Cup’s latest release Marsala on the Worcester label Moss Archive is a stellar collection of intricate sound dimensions that work like keys to unlock different spaces of your mind you never knew existed. Sinking into distant memories and new sensations as a delicate virtual orchestra leads you further and further into these other worlds.

The album’s third track “Pitfall” begins with intricate percussions that quake and scatter your thoughts to the outer perimeter of your cranium, digging deeply into the center of your mind forcing a physical response, the body becomes mobile.

Palpable in its textures, thick clouds of tones resonate to the point where the sensations of the sound waves can be felt protruding through your jawbone, emanating from the rich cavity of your skull. Brown’s arrangements are both ecstatically uplifting and nebulously lofty in a way that charges your nervous system while being grounded to the earth and fully embodied.

In conjunction with the release of Marsala, Tristian Whitehill (Euglossine) created a hallucinatory visual accompaniment for “Skyline Drive”, combining animation and 3D graphics. Bringing awareness to world cups video game music influence, Whitehills video is a surreal journey of a character riding a creature that is a cross between a bat and a manatee. The lush bright graphics reflect the surreal soundscapes. Brown’s sonic vibrations deliver a cranial massage combining orchestration full of rich harmonies and decadent melodies, with a synthetic gloss of intricate sound design and compositional craft. Skyline drives slowly billows out of clusters of droning tones that unravel into propulsive melodies of a reflexive nature.