Multi-instrumental musicians from Columbus, Ohio; making genre-bending music that has rap, beats, grooves, keyboards, guitars, scratches, riffs, jams, feedback, sweat, laughs, beers, blues and truths. The Lab Rats are defined by a Rock and Roll mentality and a blue collar reality; explained within the realm of hip hop, blues, rock & electronica; determined to make new music.
Coming from the lower-middle class land of suburbia, lyricist/guitarist, Brian Brown delivers observations taken from his life and the world around him. With 30 menial day jobs under his belt and the loans from his unfinished community college days almost paid off, he has chosen the pen as his weapon to combat the doldrums of a Midwestern, working class lifestyle.
DJ KW is the beatmaking part of this duo. Deeply experienced in the making and DJing of electronic music, KW is steeply entrenched in a multi-instrumental world of keyboards, laptops, guitars, hand percussion. KW loves technology and loves it equally in his studio and on your stage. In addition to blazing his pedal steel guitar, he uses two Numark CD-X digital turntables and KORG synths.
This is the second offering from this Columbus based Hip Hop duo. It’s front porch stories of ghost trains that visit you in the night. It's an existential exercise that explains the purpose of your nervous system. It's a guide to stretching pennies and the art of scratching lottery tickets. It's a deadbeat dad story that would make Oprah Winfrey weep. It's a conspiracy theory from a delirious lyricist. It’s half full ashtrays and half empty glasses. Everything you hear on this record (beats, clinks, riffs, skronks, booms and bips) were performed by the Rats themselves and are the result of a self contained effort. No classic recordings were harmed in the making of this album.
The Cincinnati newspapers loved it!
"Talk about your cool hybrids. The Lab Rats work an amazing groove informed by the jammed-out Riff Rock of MC Brian Brown on electric guitar and the mad breakbeats and electronic touches of DJ Kelly Warner, a multi-instrumentalist with two turntables and a microphone (and a pedal steel and keys and congas). With Brown's suburban-weary songs of everyday frustration and Warner's broadly whacked musical accompaniment, the Lab Rats will be your new favorite experiment, particularly with their about-to-be-released new album, Half Full Ashtrays, Half Empty Glasses."
-- Cincinnati CityBeat, 9/21/06
"It's easy to tag Columbus-based duo The Lab Rats as hip-hop, but it's so much more. On the group's upcoming release, Half Full Ashtrays, Half Empty Glasses, you'll hear jazz, funk, big beats, quirky samples and atmospheric soundscapes. It's the push and pull between musicians Brian Brown and Kelly Warner (DJ KW) that makes it a collaborative - we're constantly critiquing or supporting each other's ideas," Warner says. Expect a dynamic live show, but have it your way. "I don't tell people to get your hands up - it's not an aerobics class," Brown says. "I try to let the songs do the talking."
-- CIN Weekly, 9/21/06
Their first record, "Short Order EP" was called one of the best five releases in 2004 by Columbus' weekly arts & entertainment newspaper, The Other Paper.
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