Artist Profile: Daniel Brooks

For New Jersey-based experimental rock artist Daniel Brooks, it has always been a matter of tinkering, both with his sound and his approach to his artistry, from the time he was a small child learning the basics of music on his Casio keyboard. Now, he has undergone a stark sonic transformation over the last few years, and that process of tinkering has only taken on a new, more nuanced and extensively layered form: one that is abundantly evident in each of his last two projects.

Growing up in a crowded home with a large portion of his extended family, Brooks’s first introduction to music came primarily through his uncle: a guitar player and a massive fan of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

From an early age he had access to a variety of instruments, but there was no external pressure or mandate for him to practice. Instead, he would rush to his keyboard or his guitar when he heard a song on the radio he wanted to emulate, attempting to coax the notes out using his rudimentary grasp on music theory.

However, what was most influential was his childhood obsession with the “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater” video game series, whose soundtrack was stuffed with the indie and punk rock vibes of the early 2000’s.

“I think a big part of [my interest in music] was, when you're a kid, you kind of have those dreams like, ‘I want to be an astronaut. I want to be a fireman or whatever.’ I would play “Tony Hawk's American Wasteland" and be like, ‘I want to join Green Day’. That era's rock music… was one of the last periods as of right now where there was a clear aesthetic that appealed to the youth, specifically in rock music. So, me being exposed to that, I was like, ‘That's what I want to do’.”

When he was in middle school, he realized for the first time that he had the capacity to record a full band sound on his own. He quickly took full advantage of that fact, scratching out demos in his garage, and over time, he amassed a group of friends to form a band very age-appropriately entitled “Ranch”.

As that project fell apart, however, Brooks came to the realization that he intended to take this pursuit more seriously than many of his peers. He began experimenting with some of the synth and drum machine sounds that his Casio had to offer and, through his time in high school, carved out a unique and, at times, manic sound that encapsulated aspects of his extensive listening and playing habits from years past.

He moved from GarageBand to Logic, and over time, his sonic repertoire expanded exponentially.

Yet there was still something missing, even after years of creative output on Brooks’s part. Although all of his songs were published under his name, he had to that point avoided using his own vocals on his songs, instead inviting a friend or a collaborator to come track the vocals based on a demo track he had laid down.

“There came a time where I was tired of having to do that. I wanted to just do it myself. That's what the For You, To You & About You record is, was me realizing that I was just going to do it myself. I'd been doing it on these little vocal demos for years. It's time I put my foot down, you know?... The reason why everything else isn't [on streaming services] is because it's not me. It doesn't feel like something I've done…”

His debut album, in a proper sense, is therefore For You, To You & About You: a nine-track effort that bucks many of the experimental trends and sonic flutterings he had toyed with in his earlier output. While it maintains the centrality of his sound, it is undeniably softer and more focused, benefitting immensely from the injection of its own creator’s voice.

However, his most recent project, 2025’s I Sold My Soul For Control, takes back that experimental mantle wholeheartedly. Various synths and electronic effects flitter across and gently mar the album’s ostensibly smooth landscape, leaving a strangely cohesive and unified sonic experience in their wake.

For inspiration for his recent project, Brooks turned to an unconventional source: the aesthetic experience of a jar of Mineral Ice topical gel. In the same way that Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam bloomed from just such a singular perception, Brooks’s newest album came to life through an attempt to capture a simultaneously hyper-specific and confusingly nebulous concept in sonic form.

Now, just over a month removed from his second project in his current artistic iteration, he is not yet sure where this pursuit will lead him. At the very least, he has yet to find the aesthetic center around which his tinkerings and experimentations can orbit.

“I need something almost like an aesthetic focus, and then whatever comes as a byproduct of that is the end result. It's not like, ‘This record is going to sound like that.’ It's more so something I can focus on to base everything around…I haven't found that thing yet. To base it all upon. I've been listening to a lot of stuff… but that also takes place over years. Something visual, I don't have it yet.”