Zach Brock

Dirty Mindz, the ninth solo album from acclaimed violinist and Grammy Award-winning Snarky Puppy member Zach Brock, was almost fated to not see the light of day. In the months – and, thanks to the pandemic, subsequent years – after the bulk of the album was recorded at Dreamland studios in upstate New York in October 2019, the much sought-out musician kept hitting a wall with the project. “There were many times I gave up on this record mentally,” Brock explains, but whenever he considered moving on to something new, the unfinished album kept pulling him back in, its tracks latching onto him like magnets each time. “I had put my whole heart into these songs and that’s what made it possible for me to revisit them after so much time.” he reasons. His first solo release for GroundUP Records, Dirty Mindz draws inspiration from all areas of the musician’s life – his family, childhood, lifelong love of music – to create something that crackles with passion, energy and ideas.

Brock’s new album subverts the expectations of what a violin should sound like, allowing him to showcase a part of his musical voice that he’s previously held back from expressing. After an early review labeled what he considered his “straight ahead” playing as “jazz fusion,” he blocked himself off from exploring certain sounds and ideas for years. “I don’t think I was secure enough with my place in the world at that time,” he says. “Now, having educated myself for 15, 20 more years and having grappled with what fusion really is, tracing it back to the generations before me, I’ve started getting over labels and opening up new creative pathways.”

Zach Brock Website
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