Brady Likes Music

Alright. It's officially colder out. Trees look dead, you wanna go out less. You need some comfort music to ease that seasonal depression. Brady's got you covered. It's pretty simple. I'm gonna gush about some albums. I'll link each one too. Some records I'll have more to say about than others. There's no specific order. Here goes nothing! Alessandro Cortini - Avanti I wanted to bring this one up first since I figured it was the most appropriate for this sort of weather. It's fuzzy, warm synths layered over delay and reverb. The record was made as a soundtrack to Cortini's home videos, which had no audio to them whatsoever when he discovered the original tapes. The record is a stunning piece of music and it was my gateway to discovering tape recorders as instruments, and my gateway to his solo work. Can't recommend it enough. Fennesz - Black Sea Fennesz is one of those artists I wish I found out about sooner. Black Sea is dark. It's murky and

So my busiest weekend of the year is winding down. It felt so good to be doing more proper, LOUD live shows.  Last night at Liar's Club was fucking excellent. It was a super tight gig and we absolutely nailed it in typical Creeps fashion. I remembered why we don't do the paper suits much though, man. I was so dehydrated by the end of the show, even just wearing the suits for three songs I feel like I exhausted SO much more energy just because it was so fucking hot on stage. I was boiling. However, we ripped through the set and I was so glad we were first. It was an easy night! I loved the acoustic gig Vanity Contest did in August but man, being at an actual venue was a breath of fresh air. I felt so much more in my element. The visuals, the whole vibe we were going for was a lot more along the lines of what we're about. We debuted some new material from [REDACTED], and even played Eyes Open for the first time (glad we didn't at the acoustic gig). People were super rece

Sinner Get Ready is tied. Fuck. I didn't think I'd be as into this album as I was. Believe me, I was wary of the collaborations and it being a double album, I know they'd always talked about not being sure of doing one. I went in excited, but not completely over the moon. I thought I was prepared, and I still got my fucking face melted and my heart broken. I don't say this lightly, but I think Mastodon have finally... truly surpassed what's often been considered their very best work. If you could say that. If anything, they raised their own bar enormously high. I didn't know exactly how possible that was considering the vast, dense musicality of "the big four" and 2017's Emperor of Sand .  Yes, I'm serious. This is an absolute triumph. Some may argue it's bloated, too "mid-tempo," it's not "sludgy" enough as a certain melon has griped on their more recent material. You can think that. It's ok. I feel otherwise.

Does anybody find it funny that Facebook and Instagram were down the day after a pretty damning series of information came out about how they're TOTALLY aware of how much hate they foster and promote? Me too. Fuck Zuckerbot. Break Facebook up. YEAH, I CAN SAY THAT HERE. YOU CAN'T GET TO ME HERE IF NOBODY CARES ABOUT BLOGGER ANYMORE YOU ROBOT BASTARD! Anyways, being downtown again more frequently has been really nice. Especially with the fall weather officially kicked in. I really missed that morning ritual of just, waking up super early and getting to be around such a busy environment as it's all just starting to wake up. There's kind of a zen vibe to it. It's nice. I just didn't appreciate as much as I should have initially. I mean, I did but... not like I do now. There's something kind of calming knowing somewhere so busy can be so quiet and empty sometimes too. To kind of build on that, being downtown again I'm reminded of the numerous treks in diffe

Hello. Not too much happening now. It's pretty nice. Facebook and Instagram have been down basically all day so far. Just kinda been listening to records and chilling out after a busy weekend. Two artists, in particular, have been on a helluva loop lately. HEALTH and TOBACCO. Absolutely loving their stuff lately. HEALTH's Vol. 4 :: Slaves Of Fear and TOBACCO's Sweatbox Dynasty have been on heavy rotation. There's something really hypnotic and compelling about both records, but I have yet to put my finger on what exactly. I especially love how digestible they are, they're not long records by any means and the tracks are short and sweet. Nothing overstays its welcome.  Anyways, so this whole Instagram and Facebook thing is weird. On one hand, I'm fine with Facebook being gone with all the misinformation and bullshit. On the other hand, I DO use both services to keep in touch with a lot of people and it'd suck to basically be starting over with no platform to p

 So, I have pretty bad insomnia. It's developed over the past year or so and it's caused by a lot of different reasons. I've picked up a few habits that have (for the most part) helped me out. I have a lot on my mind, so tonight I'm gonna try getting a lot of things out of my system. A big that helps me is journaling and just kinda word-vomiting. A big thing that's been keeping me going lately is the new Vanity Contest album. It's looking likely that we're stopping all projects for the remainder of this year, putting them on the back burner, and focusing on shows and this new record. It's really something else. We've been a little quiet on working on it other than saying that "we're working on it." It's really coming together on the instrumental end. Picking apart tracks, polishing up the agonizing little details. You probably wouldn't notice but I know it's there, so I have to fix it. We're gonna try doing vocals ove

  Hey people! My new EP Birdsong is now available on all streaming platforms and through Bandcamp. You can find the link to it here or on my Bandcamp . The video for the single, Lakefront, is embedded below. 

  Hey! Just letting you guys know about the Sleeper Sessions, a project I've been working on and keeping up with that's a series of live performances from my solo projects. Check it out!

Photo by Oliver Halfin, you can find them here So, as part of my class project, I was required to get two interviews with music industry professionals. I got the opportunity to interview none other than The New Regime mastermind, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, and Nine Inch Nails drummer Ilan Rubin. I recently received his latest release Heart Mind Body & Soul on vinyl and got in touch with Ilan to ask him some questions about his career. Ilan is the sole member of the alt-rock project The New Regime, and handles all of the songwriting and performing himself, and produces each record with his brother Aaron. Of course, I also had to ask a couple of questions about his new album, as it topped my best albums of 2020 list. Ilan was incredibly kind and gave me the "OK" to put the interview up here. *This interview was conducted as part of the Hustle Your Career project for BravenX's Winter/Spring 2021 program, to get insight from people that work in the industry tha

My latest solo album Sleeper was featued on The Wicker People, give it a read below through the embed! Also, tapes of Sleeper were released for Bandcamp Friday, they're limited to 30 copies. If you'd like a copy you can pick one up on my bandcamp . Thank you to Christian Moreno for the wonderful write-up and the very kind words! Follow him on his Instagram @thewickerpeople. View this post on Instagram A post shared by @thewickerpeople Sleeper by Brady Matteson

  My latest solo album, Sleeper, was featured on Middle Music! Many thanks to Tim Bauer and the folks at Middle Music for the support, you can go give it a read here . You can also stream Sleeper below through the Bandcamp embed: Sleeper by Brady Matteson

So I figured I might as well answer a quick question for those wondering about why the heck I've been doing so much solo music! Not to fear, Vanity Contest is still active and hard at work with new material. I figured for a while I might as well explain why there's an "about me" tab when I only have two major releases... right? If you scroll a bit further, there's a TON of material that's from my earliest days of doing music. Those records from 2018 and back are all my earliest recordings and links to where you can find them. I was embarrassed by them for the longest time and took me a really long time to feel comfortable about them. For every half-decent idea, there were about 30 terrible ones. I was just learning how to use DAWs and just using my phone and whatever Garageband synth plugins I could find that I liked. Yeah, they're flawed, but it's my roots! The earliest gasps of Vanity Contest, for cryin' out loud! It took me a long time to accept

Yes, it's true! I rebranded the blog AGAIN. I wanted a hub for all the things I've been doing. That's all. If you'd like, you can read more about that in the "About Me" tab. -brady