Boing Boing covered the albums, so I’d better jump on the bandwagon too, right? Actually, I’ve been meaning to write up Brad Sucks for a while and now seems like a good time to finally post.

From Brad’s Magnatune page: “Brad Sucks is a one-man band who writes, records, mixes and distributes his music from his home in Ottawa, Canada. Dripping with grooves, a vivid lyrical style, and an incredibly catchy pop sensibility, Brad’s music has been likened to that of Beck, Moby, Folk Implosion and John Vanderslice.”

I Don’t Know What I’m Doing is catchy electro-pop that, like Beck and Moby, uses studio production to sound more interesting than it is. If that sounds like a slam, it’s not - that’s the bread and butter of one of my favorite bands, Radiohead.

Brad is pretty tech savvy. He’s got a blog, a podcast for new song demos and another for newly submitted remixes, and he’s using the Internet to get heard, if not paid. “If the worst-case scenario is becoming a well-heard musician who never gets paid, I can live with that,” he says. To further promote his music, Brad put up the complete source recordings (torrent) for I Don’t Know What I’m Doing so fans could remix all the tracks. Brad picked his favorites and compiled them as I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Remixed.

The remix album is, naturally, an even more adventurous textural and rhythm exploration from a variety of very skilled remix artists. The sound remains electro-pop, though usually with a strong emphasis on the electro. The highlights for me were “You’ve Got the Message (Red(d)Mix)” and “Bad Attraction (Earjamm mix)”

It seems to me that Brad doesn’t suck, and he knows exactly what he’s doing.

I Don’t Know What I’m Doing is available in 128kbps MP3, and the remix album is available in 192kbps and a full-album ZIP (for best speeds, use the torrent). In case the site’s bandwidth gives out, the first album is also available from Magnatune: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.

Download
I Don’t Know What I’m Doing
I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Remixed