Myself Almost — my new single — is available today everywhere you get your fine organic hand-made artisanal music streams… It’s a vibey indie electronic song about relationships and technology, disconnection despite constant connection. I am typing this into my phone instead of talking to my friends. Hope you like the song. Here’s the lyric video:
Thanks for listening. Also stream show tonight on YouTube 8pm EST/5pm PST.
I’ve got a new single streaming on Thursday: Myself Almost. It’s a mostly-electronic song about technology and relationships. Mixed & Mastered by Rob Cosh, with visuals by Mackenzie Glisson.
I’ve included the final audio file for patrons if you want to check it out early. (The demo was called Cell Phone and was posted last June.)
Also: come join Ben & I this Thursday at 8PM EST/5PM PST for a release day live stream!
Brad
In It to Win It (feat. Jason Lytle) is now available on all streaming services! It premiered in FLOOD Magazine:
As if the robotic pep talk that is “In It to Win It” wasn’t uplifting enough, the latest single from Brad Sucks’ first album since 2012, A New Low in Hi-Fi, is the story of inspiration, mortification, and redemption. With its Grandaddy vibes, the mumblecore indie-pop single was an excuse to mend bridges with the indietronica icons after a perceived ill-fated first impression with vocalist Jason Lytle.
“Grandaddy’s been one of my favorite bands since I heard The Sophtware Slump long ago and Jason’s been a huge inspiration for me ever since,” shares Brad Turcotte. “I wrote ‘In It to Win It’ and thought it had a bit of a Grandaddy vibe and fantasized about the idea of getting Jason’s voice on it but was too embarrassed to try and ask him.
“Jason and I interacted a few times publicly on Twitter,” he continues, “and then some fan of mine was an asshole to him and for a minute I thought Jason was mad at me and I had a panic attack so I DM’d him to apologize and he was super nice. I then cruelly exploited that niceness by pitching the song to him and he was super kind and wonderful.”
“I really really like this song…but unfortunately the joke is on Brad,” Lytle adds. “Turns out I was mad at him and his dumb fan for that thing that was said on Twitter and I vowed to do what I could to sabotage him if I ever got the chance. Lo and behold a year or so later I’m working on a song of Brad’s he asked me to help out on. Here is the joke part: You know that saying ‘the Midas Touch?’ Like, “That guy has the Midas Touch.” Well…I have “the Primer touch.” Like shitty early ’80s Honda Civic painted primer touch. All my collaborations go nowhere…do nothing…fade…rust…disappear. I’m sorry Brad. Good luck with all of the songs I had nothing to do with…but you know where this one is headed.”
Hear the result of this touching kismet below.
Stay tuned for future singles! A New Low in Hi-Fi releases June 10th.
Hey all, “Lonely” the song from Bee and PuppyCat Season 1, Episode 8 is now available on all music services: Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, Bandcamp and more here.
I also put a lyric video for it on Youtube
Thank you for listening 🖤
Well holy shit guys, it's been ten years since I released Out of It, my second album. To mark the occasion I'm releasing a fully remastered limited edition vinyl. It's available for pre-order now and it'll ship in September. Order it here (scroll down and click on Buy Record/Vinyl). Include a note if you want yours signed! I don't mind and it makes me feel like a big important guy.
Ottawa, you were kind to me as usual and did a great job tolerating all the new songs we played. Let's see how these other cities do, though:
Montreal, QC - July 6th: Quai des Brumes Toronto, ON - August 18th: Smiling Buddha
Please come out to these -- I'm very easily discouraged!
There’s a fresh new shirt store! Plus by popular request there's some I Don’t Know What I’m Doing men’s and women’s shirts you might like?
Fun fact: the I Don't Know What I'm Doing album art is by Allen Henderson and he hosts a podcast about movies and history called Midmost Coast, check it out!
I scored this cute little animation that Pendleton Ward made:
That's all I got for now, working on a lot of stuff I hope I can show you soon. Hit me up on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram! Til next time,
Brad brad@bradsucks.net
If you're looking to get yourself a copy of Better Than Nothing (my completely un-earned 'greatest hits') in vinyl and/or digital formats, you can get those in my store or over on Bandcamp. There are about 200 records left and after that they're gone (unless I decide to press more, but the record will look different.)
If you want the record signed, just include a note with your order and I'll scrawl on it.
The vinyl and the digital versions were remastered separately from each other and from the original unmastered mixes, so I think they sound pretty, pretty good. I'm considering remastering all three records now to bring 'em up to the level of this digital release, but that's a battle for another time.
Happy holidays and thank you so much for supporting me through the three records that led to this release. I'm doing my best to make the fourth one decent for y'all.
Big news! I’m releasing my first ever vinyl record. It’s called Better Than Nothing and it’s a compilation of eleven of the more popular Brad Sucks songs I put out from 2003 to 2012. It’ll be released in September via Feedbands (membership not required) and is available for pre-order now here: http://bit.ly/2tfIDid
Info:
Side B Bad Sign There’s Something Wrong Borderline Thanks for the Add You’re Not Going Anywhere
And here's that pre-order link again: http://bit.ly/2tfIDid
Thank you!
Guess who's got a new album out? That's right, it's this guy. And probably other people. Click the cover art to check it out and possibly buy it:
It's called Guess Who's a Mess. Ten songs of kinda loud uptempo stuff. I think it's about dealing with people's expectations. It should be on iTunes soon.
The CD release party is tonight at Zaphod Beeblebrox in Ottawa. I'll be on CBC radio today at 3 to say some things with my mouth.
Thanks to everybody for their patience and help and support while I struggled through the production of this record and my other records and my whole life. Here's the latest song I posted to Youtube:
Creep me on Twitter if you require further updates.
Hey hey. You can now pre-order my new album through this website. It'll be out November 2nd and then up on iTunes and Amazon and whatever else shortly after.
Also there's still a record release party happening.
The new album will be out November 2nd. There'll be a release party:
Finally got around to adding a radial email address finder to my Mappy Email Signup app. Mappy Email lets visitors/fans select their locations on a map and save their email addresses. So you can contact them only when you're in the area (which is more polite). It's basically an open source Eventful.com that doesn't hang all your contacts up in a third party.
The new version finally has a page (/admin/) where you can specify a radius (in kilometers), click the map and see all the email addresses that are within that area. So you can paste them into whatever mailing list app you're using.
Album release has gone well, thanks everyone! Decent sales, lots of positive feedback. Still lots of work to do, which I am working on doing.
I rewrote the guts of the music submissions/you section and added all the new album tracks and source in there. Still haven't added all the items I was sent from the new album release, but that'll come soon.
Some stuff I need to blogs:
Yes!
My new album Out of It is (FINALLY) out! Please listen to it! Please spread it around! Please like it! (And perhaps please purchase it!):
It's got ten songs, you can pay what you want, it's available in CD, MP3 & FLAC. There's no stupid DRM and it's Creative Commons licensed. CD purchases get instant downloads and the full audio multi-track source will be available in the next day.
Some thoughts:
A lot's changed since I started putting music on the Internet way back in 2001. Artist-endorsed free downloads were shocking. Flexible pricing was still an untested novelty. It was rare to find source files from artists and sharing music wasn't encouraged by new artists.
Recently I was asked if I'd do anything different this time around. Would I still give the music away for free? Would I still give away my source files? Would I still be easygoing about copyright? Surely I could pull back now and try to cash in.
And I honestly couldn't imagine why I'd do things different. The only reason I, a dude who made an album by himself in a country basement, has had any sort of success is because people took it upon themselves to share my music with their friends. They remixed it, they used it in their videos, they played it on their podcasts, they included it in software and games and it took on a life of its own.
To sabotage that would be a huge, retarded mistake. Instead I'll be grateful if Out of It worms around the world in even close to the same freaky way I Don't Know What I'm Doing did and continues to.
Anyway, this is a long way of saying I love you Internets. Thanks for all your support and I hope you like Out of It. I'm going to bed, good night!
Welp, I had a good time at the CD release party last night. Thanks to everyone who showed up and anyone who jumped on stage at the end there during the crowd-participation part of “Out of Itâ€.
Besides the talented Dave Norris and the Harvey Cartel who played, musicians in attendance were Jesse Dangerously, Claude from The Peptides, TheHipCola, Meredith Luce and MC Frontalot was on a phone in IM capacity.
Various Songfighters and REAPER users came out of the woodwork, which was awesome.
Out of It goes on sale for everybody out there tomorrow night at midnight (EST). Woooooooo.
I don't normally “web log†my feelings but I'm actually pretty nervous about this whole CD release. I was all “beh whatever dudes we'll see how it goes, just another day on the grind you know dog†until a couple hours ago when I became like "!!!! HOLY LORD". It feels like my future "as an artist" sort of hinges on it but then I feel that way about everything.
Honestly, I think the neurotic anxiety has been getting to me for a couple weeks but I've had tasks to keep me busy. Two weeks ago I was sleeping away peacefully and then I guess I tore at my forehead with my retarded talons. As you can see from the picture up there I managed to put a two inch scratch in my dome. That ain't relaxed behavior.
The CD release party is tomorrow night. It's sort of a drag though, you folks who read my blog and have been with me for a long time are not generally in my town so you won't be there. So that part breaks my heart kinda because I love you guys okay now the vodka's talking catch you later.
First batches of pre-ordered Out of It CDs are away! Release is just around the corner! Some people said they don't hate it! I'm nervous as can be!
Thankfully I've got a lot of mail processing to do, website and source to get ready as well as rehearsing for the CD release party this Friday, so that's keeping me a bit distracted.
I had it in my head that I'd write a bit more about the process of getting to this point but there just hasn't been any time. So maybe you can use your imagination?
Had to get one last week-long sickness out of my system before the album release. Ahhh much better.
The pre-orders are all ready to go and will be in the mail this week! Thanks to everyone who's ordered one, it slightly counter-balances the release dread I feel.
Also: everything seems to be happening according to schedule. Crazy!
The CD Release Party for Out of It is booked and officially on September 5th at Cafe Dekcuf in the city of Ottawa. Times and bands are still TBD, though I am practically guaranteed to be there and drinking heavily. But you are super invited and hey, you could pick up a copy of the CD three days before the release date! What a coincidence that is!
This will also likely be the last show as a regular old three piece rock band. It's been super fun, but I can't resist putting a computer in the live show and electronifying things and making us prone to tech problems. Anyway, I hope to see you there.
The double CD ccMixter Brad Sucks remix compilation is finally out! Links: CD 1, CD 2.
ccMixter is a website where artists can upload source files under Creative Commons licenses so that other artists can remix them free of legal worries. Their community has been very kind to me.
Like everything I seem to do, this compilation took way too long to put together but it has somehow struggled its way into daylight.
Thanks of course to all the talented remixers, Magnatune, ccMixter, Victor Stone in particular for his help and Katie Sekelsky for the awesome album art.
This isn't the first remix album for I Don't Know What I'm Doing, but it'll be the last I work on. Other I Don't Know What I'm Doing remix albums that I know of:
I know there are a few other full-album remix projects out there in various states of completion so let me know if I'm missing anything.
Gaim is an open source instant messenger, which is compatible with AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and more. A few months ago Steven Garrity told me they were looking for new event sounds and asked if I'd be interested in contributing something.
It sounded like a fun challenge and the work of Steven (and associates) helping with the design of Mozilla Firefox has been real intriguing to me. I like the idea of getting artists involved in the open source design process because the interface often gets neglected which drives away the users who don't care how awesome it is under the hood.
Steven and I agreed on the requirements for good instant messenger sounds, and they're fairly demanding: the sounds must be communicative, attention-grabbing and at the same time can't get annoying after the user has heard them a thousand times. Tricky!
For a week or so I came up with sound ideas and Steven gave me a lot of helpful feedback. I'd tweak the sounds, throw a bunch out, and we'd go through them again. It was actually a lot more work than you'd expect for some tiny bleeps and boops. Here's the sound pack we came up with: bradsucks-gaimsounds.zip
I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. It was my first attempt at any sort of UI sound design and I think they balance sexiness and functionality pretty well -- they get your attention but are mellow enough to keep from getting annoying too quickly.
A couple of weeks ago I wound up in the Gaim IRC channel and was told that the sounds have been committed to the Gaim 2.0 CVS, which means they should be the new default sounds for Gaim 2.0 whenever it's released. So I'm pretty happy about that and thanks a lot to Steven for getting me involved in this project in the first place.
Also: by being included with Gaim the sounds are now under the GPL, I believe. So if you're an open source developer and need some sounds, feel free to use them.
Update: Steven has posted a before and after of the Gaim sounds for y'all here.
