John Isaac Watters has long been among the most cerebral, although underappreciated, purveyors of folk music in Los Angeles, his spare meditations fraught with the fragility of his own humanity (and yours). During his 2016 residency at the Hi Hat, Watters unveiled the new collaboration Rainstorm Brother, which finds the singer-songwriter working with keyboardist-producer Tyler Chester to achieve a sound that might be described as cinematic freak-folk … or, at least, experimental and extraordinary.-buzzbands.la

Rainstorm Brother’s Pt.1 is the perfect marriage of solo artist (and former architect) Watters’ pensive, spare acoustic numbers and producer/keyboardist Chester’s deep, dreamy soundscapes. Across the six songs, Watters’ work as a folk/country balladeer is juxtaposed to intoxicating effect with Chester’s synthesizers, layered strings, modular electronics, sequencers, 808s, live drums and electric guitar, casting his music in a lush and challenging new light.-newnoisemagazine.com

Rainstorm Brother is songwriter John Isaac Watters (who you might remember from his Hi-Hat residencies, or other street-level sets) and electronics wrangler Tyler Chester, who together make an atmospheric kind of future folk, and “Heavy Blue” is a glimpse of their coming debut. It’s a desolate piano-and-synth almost-ballad with barely-there drums and a relentless sense of tension and release. (If Springsteen covered more than just that one Suicide song, he might end up with something like this.) - L.A. Record