April 7, 2025 |
Shivas Howard Brown, 35, never planned to be where he is today. The journey to founding Friendly Pressure, his fast-growing startup specialising in immaculately designed, ultra-sexy, bespoke loudspeaker systems, has more been the result of a snowball effect than pre-meditated decisions.
I caught him on the phone during a hectic day of moving into a new studio space. With the business growing, his makeshift setup, a shed-cum-recording studio at the back of his best mate’s garden, could no longer keep up. “The fine line between work and play blurred too much,” he says, before diving into how it all began, conveniently answering my first three questions without me even asking.
Howard Brown can’t point to the exact starting date of Friendly Pressure but recalls February 2021 as the time he first posted on the Instagram page that now anchors it. He talks quickly but with affirmation, backed by a decade of developing a full-bodied knowledge of upgrading and building speakers. Audio engineering was never something he had formal training in, he simply liked to host ear-splintering parties as a teen. “My dad had Heybrook speakers, which he bought in the 1980s, and he let me use them at every house party I had. I blew them twice by playing music too loud. The second time I did it, he didn’t want to repair them and they were shelved. It wasn’t until 2015 that I pulled them out of my mum’s shed and thought, ‘I need to bring these back to life.’”
Shivas Howard Brown, founder of bespoke speaker specialist Friendly Pressure; cardigan by SUPREME, trackpants by WALES BONNER
Equipped with curiosity and all the right tools (he tells me he’s “always had a multimeter [which measures electric readings], a toolbox and a soldering iron,” as you do), Howard Brown started learning. “Making expensive mistakes,” he says of what he tells people when they ask how he acquired his knowledge. “When you ruin something and it’s entirely your responsibility, you realise its gravity. That’s where you have to work through understanding how you made the error in the first place. It’s about ensuring you don’t repeat the same mistakes.”
This all brewed in the background while Howard Brown spent most of his twenties as a recording artist manager. Despite achieving success and collaborating with big names like Pete Tong, something didn’t feel right. “I spent those years realising I’m not an admin person. I’m not a facilitator for other people.”
Then came 2020. As the world went into lockdown, Howard Brown, like many, entered a period of reflection and existential crisis. “I had always felt there was something somewhat exploitative about managing artists,” he says. “There’s often an overhead that conflicts with the artist’s purist approach to creating music. I’ve always had a habit of spending extra cash on new speakers and selling my old ones on eBay. During lockdown, all these ideas started coming together and crystallising.” The backing track for this realisation? Friendly Pressure, released in 1994 by American soul artist Jhelisa.
Howard Brown has designed bespoke speakers for exhibitions, brands and private clients; WALES BONNER
From then on, the business grew rapidly, with Friendly Pressure speakers appearing in music-head hotspots like Space Talk, a cocktail bar, café and listening space in Farringdon, and attracting commissions from major artists like Seth Troxler and Sampha. This period was also peppered with opportunities that the founder still can’t quite process, like being asked to create a pair of bespoke speakers for the British Library’s extensive exhibition Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music last summer. The display explored the 500-year musical journey of the UK’s African and Caribbean communities and how their impact has shaped the landscape of contemporary British music.
“I wanted to present something that was my version of what sound-system stacks would be,” Howard Brown says. This goal was driven by the fact that nobody refers to the sound systems you see at Notting Hill Carnival with highbrow terms like ‘audiophile’ or ‘hi-fi’ despite their “identical ethos” of trying to get the best-quality sound out of the system as they can. “This highlights the dichotomy between different cultures. Certain things considered to be Caribbean aren’t as highly regarded as other things,” he says. “[Showcasing these systems as ones that should be respected] was my agenda. Those speakers represent my lineage from my Jamaican side, from my dad.”
a bespoke Friendly Pressure speaker design; speaker photography courtesy of Friendly Pressure
Howard Brown’s attachment to sound, music and DIY culture feels as non-linear as his journey into audio engineering; it’s more like a purpose sewn into the threads of his DNA. His mum, Sally Howard, was a film producer who worked on Middle Eastern advertisement promos for Coca-Cola and Estée Lauder and collaborated with her cousin, the director Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham), on music videos. Her Punjabi background, Howard Brown says, pushed her to always be “making, producing and hustling”, giving him the confidence to “step into a space dominated by trained professionals”. Alongside the impact of Caribbean DIY culture, his singer-songwriter dad, Austin Howard (of ’80s pop group Ellis, Beggs & Howard), has an influence that extends to the design side too. “He’s the most stylish man I’ve ever known. He’s 63 and was in a campaign for Vivienne Westwood recently. Most people who meet my dad ask, ‘Why are we hanging out with you instead of him?’”
The key lesson Howard Brown drew from this influence is that personal style is crucial in understanding what aesthetic suits you best and how design fits into that. It’s a principle he applies to every Friendly Pressure commission. “When designing a speaker, you draw on everything in your mind, the sum of all the influences you’ve absorbed throughout your life. For me, that includes everything my dad and I have shared together. Authentic style takes time to develop and comes from various influences. Everything needs time to marinate to create something truly meaningful.”
Time, specifically the years he’s spent soaking up London’s club and music culture, is exactly what has allowed Howard Brown to identify the gap in the market he now occupies. “If you attend a hi-fi show, it’s rare to find something aesthetically beautiful in terms of design. You might admire pieces based on their engineering, but if you don’t understand that, they can appear unattractive,” he says. “Being aware of this dynamic, I felt there was room to approach things differently.”
Howard Brown in his new studio
He was clearly onto something. The next few months are chock-full of commissions for Friendly Pressure, and at the time of our conversation, he’s gearing up to do a job for Stone Island, for which he’s designing a system for an event during Paris Fashion Week. “I think it’s the biggest one I’ve designed, with more people involved than any project before,” he says. Describing it as “one of the most important and exciting things” he’s ever done, Howard Brown is feeling as aligned with his purpose as ever. “When people trust your work, and you’re given the financial means to produce something bigger and better, that’s when you get a fire in your stomach every morning… That’s an exciting prospect.”
We end by discussing the team he has built over the past year, people he credits with saving him from himself because he “never writes anything down”. He’s excited by the uncertainty of the future because he knows he has a good team around him to keep pushing forward. “Speakers will always be our foundation, but everyone on the team is curious about how the ecosystem will grow. I see us somewhere between companies like Dyson, with their full suite of options. That’s what’s interesting about speakers – there are a million different shapes and sizes. Still, when you find the right one…” he chuckles, caving into the urge for a good pun, “it speaks to you.”
Friendly Pressure’s future looks bright and laced with experimentation. That trial-and-error mindset Howard Brown embraces throughout his journey is working, and why fix something that’s not broken? For him, getting there is as thrilling as the destination, and one thing’s for certain, we’re up for watching it all unfold.
Photography by Joshua Tarn. Taken from 10 Men Issue 61 – MUSIC, TALENT, CREATIVE – on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
