A carefully curated newsletter for contemporary creatives.

This week's theme:
‍ALL THE JAMS
New to PRD?  Start here.
*one-size-fits-some
*designed for desktop, tolerated on mobile

What's Inside This Issue

  1. Spotlight  Smooth Nature | a Waco, TX trio working to reshape traditional R&B
  2. Sharing  Time to Puzzle | a new Pop Rock Puzzle for those creative days - or weeks
  3. Showcase  The Human | beats for days...and days and days and days

"There is a tendency in philosophy to separate the mind, the intellectual operations, from the passions, the emotions. This tendency moves into psychology, and thence into neuroscience. The neuroscience of music, in particular, has concentrated almost exclusively on the neural mechanisms by which we perceive pitch, tone intervals, melody, rhythm, and so on, and, until very recently, has paid little attention to the affective aspects of appreciating music." - (continued below)

If you happen to be in the Austin, TX neighborhood this fall, chances are these guys are playing their soulful jams somewhere near you.

I caught up with Marvin, Diarian, and Gerald (left to right in pic) of new age R&B trio Smooth Nature ahead of their packed live schedule for the fall.

We connected on everything from early creative inspirations to future ambitions, and had a blast collaborating on this week's Spotlight feature.

Have a listen to some of the interview excerpts - accompanied by Diarian's own smooth-as-silk riffs - via the PRD Radio media player below the photo.

You can also learn more about each member of the band + explore live show footage in this week's PRD Spotlight.

This week's Sharing section is dedicated to sharing and introducing a new section for future PRD issues - the Pop Rock Puzzle!

Each future issue will now have a shiny new weekly puzzle for the PRD community to solve.

Sometimes it's a classic jigsaw like this week's puzzle, sometimes not. From jigsaws to crosswords, scrambles to scavenger hunts - a puzzle a day (or week) keeps the doctor away (and helps keep the mind distracted from all of the things calling to you from your work and boss and family and friends and pets and bills and that weird thing on your toe and life). And there's a raffle for free stuff for players that finish. Good luck.

If puzzles are your jam too, have a go at this week's Pop Rock Puzzle.

The first thing that grabbed me about The Human's videos on IG and Tik Tok was the authenticity of the sacred "jam".

Not the jam jams at first...his jam. His groove. His nod. His inner-beat. The guy gets lost in his craft every time, and I happily get lost in that.

That said, his beats are sick and as actual humans go, he seems like a good one - so count me in as a fan.

Check out this week's special mashup video that we collaborated on for all of the "creatives out there doing their thing". For a deeper dive, explore more of the musical jams and fandom of The Human in this week's Showcase feature. Hope you enjoy.

The End

What'd you think of this week's issue?

"Yet music calls to both parts of our nature - it is essentially emotional, as it is essentially intellectual. Often when we listen to music, we are conscious of both: we may be moved to the depths even as we appreicate the formal structure of a composition." - Oliver Sacks, "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain"

What

do you

know?

Do you know someone or something
that should be featured in a future issue
of Pop Rock Disco?
About PRDStart HereConnect
Published by VPGCreative.
© 2023 Pop Rock Disco. All rights reserved.