bradley
Gig Seeker Pro

bradley

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada | INDIE | AFM

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada | INDIE | AFM
Band Pop EDM

Calendar

Music

Press


"BEATROUTE"

bradley, with a lower case 'b', a one man pop attack, is releasing his newest album on Drip Audio, a BC record label. It is most often classified as an electro-pop album, but he touched on electro-acoustic, industrial, and glam-rock, which make for interestingly dark pop tunes while always having a bit of fun with it.
"Black Shirt" is a definite highlight. The addictive chorus finds a way of sticking with you, while the glitchy electronic beats skitter and skutter underneath, at times, poking out giving the sweet melody some edge. See if you recognize the melody to "Fainne". You got it-it's David Bowie's "Fame". His vocal delivery is drier and the backing track, a little noisier than Bowie's.
Overall, MountainTigerWolf is a good pop album. His hooks are catchy and instrumentally, he creates interesting tunes that don't short on quirky sensibility. It is not as memorable as some of the Drip Audio catalogue has been to date, but it is certainly something different. Give this a listen if something different is what you're searching for.....Whitney Ota - BEATROUTE


"Vancouver Province Review"

bradley-
MountainTigerWolf (Drip Audio)

Bradley Ferguson's third disc veers from the twisted roar of pink-pill program into demento-pop that doesn't so much show influence of aces such as Flaming Lips or Beta Band, but sits alongside them. Superb re-workings of Bowie's "Fame" and a cover of Great Aunt Ida's "Little Voice" complement 10 fine originals. A-

— S.D.
- Vancouver Province


"Tiger Titan and Lone Wolf"

Tiger titan and lone wolf
Beatmaster Bradley teams with violinist Jesse Zubot two quick shows
Published September 23, 2010 by M.D. Stewart in Music Previews

DETAILS
Still in Calgary Party with Ryan Bourne, Bradley, Rollout Cowboy & DJ Adam Kamis
Palomino
Saturday, September 25 - Saturday, September 25

More in: Rock / Pop
Every now and again, things just work themselves out. A few short weeks ago, Brad Ferguson, the Vancouver solo artist known simply as Bradley, was scrambling to secure a Calgary show. He had Edmonton booked for a Friday, Banff locked in the following Sunday and an empty Saturday slot staring him down. Now, his dance card is fully booked, and as an added bonus, he’ll be joined by highly esteemed West Coast violin juggernaut Jesse Zubot for the do-si-dos in both Banff and Calgary (sorry, Edmonton). How’s that for things working out?

“I’m flying straight from Toronto to Calgary on the day of the show,” says Zubot, calling from a tractor seat on his family’s lentil farm. “It just kind of worked out. Usually, it wouldn’t, but it just kind of did this time. It’ll be fun.”

Post-harvest, Zubot is off to Ontario for a quick tour with his band, Fond of Tigers, before zipping back for the two southern Alberta shows.

The pair has been friends for over 10 years, with Ferguson even playing bass for Zubot’s famed Canadian instrumental-roots duo, Zubot and Dawson. Since then, each have gone their separate way — and in very different directions.

Ferguson, with his Bradley project, exchanged his bass for a laptop computer, a synthesizer and an old Harmony arch-top guitar (“a weird, old, kind of crappy guitar that sounds pretty good,” says Zubot). Zubot, on the other hand, is sought-after producer whose expansive, improvisatorial playing has graced the work of diverse artists such as Veda Hille, Tanya Tagaq, Justin Rutledge and even Raffi. He’s also released nearly 30 discs on his own self-managed Drip Audio label, including Bradley’s latest, MountainTigerWolf.

MountainTigerWolf is a minor masterpiece. Recorded, for the most part, in Ferguson’s apartment studio, it jarringly transitions from spacious, angsty ballads to catchy-as-hell electrobeat-backed pop songs. The contrast of upbeat dance numbers with quiet moments of jaw-dropping beauty works well for Ferguson; this is surprising, especially as just a few years ago, he didn’t even consider himself a songwriter.

“The whole computer thing has changed my life,” he says with a mild chuckle. “It made me switch from playing bass in other bands to actually feeling like I had a creative outlet. I pat my computer on the back on a daily basis.”

And that creative outlet first gave us Ferguson’s project Joystick, created in collaboration with Coco Love Alcorn, followed in 2007 by his first solo disc, Pink Pill Program.

“The computer became my writing tool even before I could play guitar,” he says. “I just kind of taught myself how to play guitar so I could back myself up live.”

Last spring, Ferguson embarked on an extensive solo Canadian tour to promote MountainTigerWolf. And while the tour was considered a success, Ferguson seems to be relishing the opportunity to share the stage with Zubot, who has only played one Bradley show in the past.

And, for a taste of the magic these two are capable of creating, check out MountainTigerWolf’s gorgeous cover of Great Aunt Ida’s “Little Voice” — a beautiful song addressing serious mental illness.

“I had the track with a space that I needed filled… I was hoping for strings,” Ferguson says. “(Zubot) basically just said ‘Loop the song and press record.’ Then he goes in the other room and starts playing all these tracks, like 12 or 15 (of them).”

“I’m thinking he’s just testing out a bunch of stuff, then he’s going to come in, pick one and work on that,” he adds. “I hear him drop his bow and he runs into the room, turns on all the tracks and that’s what’s on the album.”

This might all sound too easy, but Zubot corroborates the story.

“I didn’t think about it too much,” he says. “I kind of like to work like that these days. I try not to think about things too much — just let them happen — and they go where they want to go, naturally, instead of deconstructing things too much.”

That approach, as it turns out, had Ferguson more than impressed.

“It fucking blew my mind, actually. Seriously, all those counterpoints, he had basically heard in his head and played them, one by one,” marvels Ferguson. “Literally, 12 passes through the section and it was all there!”

The duo promises a similar spontaneity when they perform together live.

“My stuff will be pretty much all improvised. There’s a few tracks I’ll probably just copy from the disc,” says Zubot.

“Even if we had a chance to rehearse, I don’t know if I would,” counters Ferguson. “Whatever he wants to do, it’s gonna sound good.”
- FFWD CALGARY (Feature)


"bradley beats heartbreak with his computer"

Bradley beats heartbreak with his computer
By Alexander Varty

It’s not false modesty when electro-folk singer-songwriter Bradley claims that the central subject of his recently released MountainTigerWolf “isn’t anything new”.
“Everybody’s had heartbreak,” he explains, on the line from his East Van home.
That may well be true. But not everyone’s picked up the pieces of their heart and turned them into an album as vital as the second solo release from the man otherwise known as Brad Ferguson. According to the soft-spoken producer and one-man band, however, MountainTigerWolf isn’t an account of a single failed affair—more like many.
“It’s continual, man,” he says resignedly. “I always seem to be fighting off that sort of thing, somehow. But it’s therapeutic to do this stuff. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a cure-all, but I feel good. So I guess that’s the answer—and, yes, I am kind of single right now.”

Granted, Ferguson’s day job isn’t all that conducive to settling down. When he’s not wearing his Bradley hat—a bright yellow trucker’s cap, it appears from MountainTigerWolf’s inner sleeve—he can usually be found on the road, playing bass with Ndidi Onukwulu, the Modelos, or the Perpetrators.
You might also have heard him with Colin James, Econoline Crush, Lily Frost, Zubot & Dawson, or Ridley Bent. A fast study, he’s one of Vancouver’s go-to guys when someone needs a bassist in a hurry.
“I started out on bass, and I’ve been freelancing for, I guess, 10 years now, playing with many, many different Canadian acts,” he says. “I do the odd tour, play on the odd album, and do a lot of one-off stuff.”

Songwriting is a relatively recent addition to his skill set, however, and his instrument of choice is not the electric bass. Instead, he’s one of many musicians who have been set free by the computer, which he first messed around with while working with singer Coco Love Alcorn on a bedroom project that would yield a 2003 album called Joystick.
“I’d never written a song before in my life,” he admits. “But at Coco’s urging I kind of learned how to use the computer as a recording studio, and then we just started playing around with beats. All of a sudden we had five or six cool songs, and it was, like, ‘Wow! This is actually pretty fun and easy and good.’ Directly after that was finished, I started writing that first album of mine [Pink Pill Program], using the computer as a writing tool just because it’s pretty hard to sit on your couch and play bass and write a melody.”

Since then, he’s added guitar to his arsenal of instruments, and a typical Bradley performance—documented on-line at blogs.myspace.com/bradleyonmyspace—finds him strumming a six-string while backed by laptop-generated beats and bass lines.

“I figure using a computer as a band member might be slightly foreign in the singer-songwriter or folk idiom or whatever,” he says. “But a lot of hip-hop acts always use backing tracks as their band, you know. It could be thought of as glorified karaoke or whatever, but I just don’t feel that way. It’s an important part of what I’m doing.”

Sampled rhythms and vintage-style synth tones play a big part on MountainTigerWolf, but the album is also very human. Onukwulu and former Mother Mother singer Debra-Jean Creelman add backing vocals to four tracks, while “Daylight’s Finally Night” and a moving cover of Great Aunt Ida’s “Little Voice” find him backed by one-man orchestra Jesse Zubot. (Zubot also adds a completely crazed scratch-and-squeak soundtrack to the disc’s final song, “Lullaby”.)

“Watching Jesse do these string parts was amazing,” Ferguson says of his old friend, occasional employer, and Drip Audio label boss. “All of a sudden there’s, like, these 15 tracks, and I’m thinking, ‘Well, he must be trying something out, and then he’s going to come and pick one and build on that.’ But then he just drops his bow and runs in and turns all these tracks on, and that’s it. That’s what’s on the album. I couldn’t believe it.”

Also on the new disc is a funked-up dance-floor-filler called “Fainne”, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the David Bowie/John Lennon cowrite “Fame”.

“Fainne was the name of a girl that I was dating, and I used to joke around with her about her name sounding the same as the song,” Ferguson says. “So that’s basically the story of that. It wasn’t really one that I’d planned on putting on the record, but again I was screwing around on my computer one day and put some beats down, and it just kind of came together.”

Ferguson might want to learn that teasing a lover about her name is one sure way to become an ex. But if that’s what it takes for him to write a song, or an album of songs, why mess with success?
- The Georgia Straight (Feature)


"Artist thrives in isolation"

If you ask Vancouver one-man band Bradley Ferguson, "12,000 kilometres does wonders for the mind."

Having recently returned from a solo cross-Canada tour that had him drive all the way to the East Coast and back again, Bradley -- who performs on a first-name basis -- is the kind of self-made, electro-rock musician one could file under "reclusive genius."

But Bradley, who will be making one of his rather rare live appearances in Vancouver at the Railway Club on Sunday night, has been gathering a lot of praise for his latest (and quite astounding) album, MountainTigerWolf, and it should be a treat to see him deliver his uniquely loopy, bloopy, fuzzy pop-rock outside the confines of his living room, where all the magic usually happens.

We recently caught up with Bradley over the phone to talk about his latest album, working solo and what he ultimately discovered about himself, travelling by his lonesome across the country.

Q: Did you have any big epiphanies out there on the road?

A: (Laughs.) I don't know if there were any major epiphanies, more like brain relaxation for eight hours a day.

Q: Or sometimes you get the opposite and the brain starts talking back?

A: Oh, there were definitely some conversations going on, but it was all good, you know?

Q: Is the "mad genius working in his little studio making noise" impression the right impression people should get about you?

A: I think that part of who I am is sticking myself in front of my computer for 10 hours a day. When I'm working, it's exactly that. I have a studio set up in my living room where I spend hours and hours trying to tweak little sounds and putting something together. When I have a song idea, it almost goes from beginning to nearly finished before I stop working on it. I mean, I don't feel like I'm a recluse at all, but in some periods I do tend to sit in front of my computer for long periods of time.

Q: How hard is it to reproduce your sound and music in concert?

A: I guess I decided early on that I wanted all those sounds in concert. When I do my live set, a lot of the beats that are on the album are on my laptop. So essentially I'm singing and playing guitar and doing those pop tunes over top of pretty much what was on the album. I want them to be like that -- I don't want to work a bunch of loop stations and try to get those sounds. That's been done. I just want to be the front guy and not have to worry about all that stuff. They're different experiences, but I wouldn't say they're completely different experiences.

Q: Why not bring in a touring band? Not only would it keep you company on the road, but a song like Your Money would be a killer rock 'n' roll song, no?

A: I don't know. I've done it with a band a couple of times. For some reason, I like the isolation of being up there by myself, you know? It might be a little too much about me, but I like the idea that it's just me up there. I would love to do it as a band at some point but I like where it is right now, actually.

Q: The album has been out for a little while and I loved it right away -- the whole Beck/Jay Reatard/ DIY feel is pretty amazing. But what is this "MountainTigerWolf" creature we're talking about?

A: It is supposed to be a little bit tongue-in-cheek. It wasn't what I had planned on calling it, I just thought I would cover some of my Vancouver indie rock animals, you know? (Laughs.) Obviously there's a lot of bands with the words "tiger," "wolf" and "mountain," so I put them together and thought, "This is going to be an undeniable title." It was just going to be a joke for my friends but then I started saying it out loud to people and liked the way it sounded. I guess there's a reason why people use all those animals in their names and titles: it sounds pretty cool, actually.

Q: What kind of head space were you in when you wrote the album?

A: I generally feel a little bit isolated, I suppose. There's been a lot of heartbreak and stuff like that -- it's the same as everybody. It is therapeutic to write about that stuff. It's what seems to come out of me. And I've always liked those kinds of tunes -- the kind of melancholy songs about your life. It makes me somehow feel better. I doesn't make me feel sad, it makes me feel calm or something.

Q: On this album, you covered David Bowie's Fame and turned it into Fainne. What does that mean, and what does it represent as a Bradley song?

A: Well, that was a girl I was dating, obviously.

Q: Uh-oh.

A: Yeah. When I'd hear that song, I'd hear that word changed to "Fainne." It was just one of those times where I started messing around on my computer and the result was way more interesting than I had planned. I just liked the sounds that were happening. I didn't really put too much thought into that one, I was just screwing around and it started sounding good. That's the true story behind that one.

Q: What can we expect from the show on June 13?

A: Actually, I'll have a - The Vancouver Sun (Feature)


"Back up to Speed"

Vancouver experimental electro-popmeister Bradley is a man of paradoxes: he's a lone wolf who drives projects himself yet thrives in collaboration. He can go for long spans of time without listening to or writing a note of music, yet cranked out his latest album MountainTigerWolf in just months. He's a sucker for dark folk who also raves about hard electronic music. One part mad genius, one part Ritalin kid, MountainTigerWolf reflects how keenly he'll follow any muse that finds him.

"I started going to tons of electro shows when I was younger, all these pretty dark electronic bands ... but at the same time I loved pop music, so I wanted to combine the two. That's one thing I missed from the electronic music scene was a basic song structure. I loved the sounds and beats, but I always wished there was a song of some sort, a nice melody, you know?" he enthuses over the phone from Terminal City.

"Bands like Gorillaz, Beck, the Flaming Lips, all those bands influenced what I hope to do with music. They have cool, chaotic sounds, but the melody is very poppy."

In the three years after his 2007 debut Pink Pill Program, he admits he had a lot of down time artistically, but when it came time to write MTW he hunkered down in his home studio and cranked out the material in a matter of months.

"I have to force myself to get started, but once I get some shit rolling that sounds good to me, then it seems to snowball. A lot of ideas start coming, and then I start thinking about it all the time. And then I don't stop working on it until it's done, even the production and close to being mixed," he laughs. "That's the beauty of the home studio, you don't have to wait for other people to become available. That's when it gets exciting."

Despite this reticence to work with others, his list of collaborations includes Coco Love Alcorn (under the project Joystick) and folk wonderkid Jesse Zubot, who may be the closest to a producer that Bradley trusts.

"I don't know if it's that I wouldn't trust someone else; I just like making all those sounds and the beats. I've never really worked with a producer, so I didn't even know how I would work with one. The beats and sounds are, to me, as important to the song as the song." V
- VUE Edmonton (Feature)


"NOW REVIEW"

Bradley
MountainTigerWolf (Drip Audio) BY CARLA GILLIS
Vancouver one-man band Bradley writes songs the modern way: with a computer, an analog synth and digital manipulation. He uses “real” instruments, too, including strings and fuzzed-out guitars, but it’s the hard-hitting computer-enhanced tunes – Monster, Padma, Hit The Floor – that separate this sophomore effort from standard lovesick-dude-with-an-acoustic-guitar fare.

The beats are pummelling and sputtering, the instrumentation over-the-top layered, the songs spliced in experimental ways. But just before the production gets too distracting, Bradley smartly balances things with sparser, more organic tunes that show off his strong voice, memorable melodies and songcraft. Especially good are the hook-filled Black Shirt and the tender Daylight’s Finally Night.

Near the end, he reveals a serious David Bowie influence in his two cover songs. For Great Aunt Ida’s Little Voice, he uses a spacey, reverb-drenched Ziggy Stardust vocal treatment and then follows it up with Bowie’s own Fame, here retitled Fainne.

Top track: Black Shirt
- NOW TORONTO


"Vancouver Sun Review 4/5 stars"

ALT-POP
MountainTigerWolf
Bradley
(Drip Audio)
Rating 4 out of 5
On MountainTigerWolf, Vancouver one-man band Bradley Ferguson regurgitates every influence this side of the late '70s, from new wave to punk and strait-laced pop, but instead of splattering chaotic patterns on the wall, he spurts out carefully crafted chunks of alt-pop beauty through strange electro-acoustic experimentation. Using a bric-a-brac array of synths, computers, drums machines and fuzzed-out guitars, Bradley hopscotches from early day Beck to latter day Jay Reatard (R. I.P.), from paranoid doom and gloom (Monster and its amazing circular drum swoop pattern) to blissful sadness (a cover of Great Aunt Ida's Little Voice, which soars with huge string swells). Bradley also pays homage to David Bowie by covering Fame (here retitled Fainne), which now crackles with weird electro-acoustic noise, zips and zaps, but the kicker is the single-worthy Your Money, a minimalistic electro-rocker with a mighty big hook ( "I'm gonna throw away the money that you gave me/Just to prove to you that I am worthy/I'm gonna put away the pills that I've been taking/Just to show you that I'm not still crazy").
-Francois Marchand, Vancouver Sun

- Vancouver Sun


"Globe and Mail Pick of the Week 3.5/4 stars"

Robert Everett-Green
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
Mountain Tiger Wolf 3.5/4

Bradley
Drip Audio/Fontana North
This cracking good album from Vancouver’s Bradley Ferguson opens with a song that feels like alternating audio snapshots from two different phases of the same relationship. The first is blurred and kind of sweaty, crowded with dirty guitar and machine-gun beats and a guy’s obsession with the person he can’t stop thinking about. The second is brutally clear, just the lightest of strummed guitar chords and a few touches on xylophone to frame a man lying broken on the rocks of love and barely able to sing: “When she calls out my name, all she feels is shame.” Somehow, you get the feeling he thinks he deserves nothing better.

Asking whether you’re worthy, while suspecting you’re probably not, is one of disc’s dominant themes. Your Money is a pushy electro-rock number bristling with attitude, but it’s really about a guy trying to prove he’s kicking the unhealthy dependencies that have made others write him off. Padma breaks from its woolly rock verses into a waltzing chorus that gently insists: “You want to, but you know you can’t.” Daylight’s Finally Night gives an awestruck account of a woman who “says she sees all the good in me,” which in this context sounds frankly incredible.

All these doubts come out in songs that couldn’t be more freshly conceived or confidently brought off. Bradley’s musical outlook encompasses the craft-conscious ethos of an old-school songwriter, the playground mentality of someone who likes to mess with synthesizers, and the tear-it-up sensibility of an unreconstructed punk. You may have already heard some of his music on television shows such as The L Word.

Black Shirt must be the most radio-ready thing ever recorded by Drip Audio, a small Vancouver label that mostly specializes in albums of free-range improvisation. The heavy two-chord verses open into a striding loose-limbed chorus that seems guaranteed to get the club jumping.

The disc’s latter half spans the extremes of the dance number Hit the Floor, the most brittle electronic thing on the album, and the extended self-medicating Lullaby, an acoustic number that tinkles directly out of Hit the Floor. I’m not so keen on the chordal ballad Little Voice or the folkish Broken, both of which feel a bit dull and conventional. Bradley is at his best when he’s not tethered to any genre. - Globe and Mail


"getunderground.com (LA) review(pinkpill)"

Finally, a true fusion of electronic, acoustic, and traditional songwriting techniques and the fascinatingly refreshing results they can achieve. bust it...

getunderground.com

- getunderground.com


"Ottawa Sun interview(pinkpill)"

Getting with the Program...the birth of bradley.

By ALLAN WIGNEY -- Sun Media


He is by nature something of a utility player, ever poised to answer the musician's call for work -- guitar, keyboards or whatever at the ready.

You might remember him from tours and concerts with Lily Frost, Moka Only, Colin James, Joystick, Zubot and Dawson or Econoline Crush. But since the release of his deliciously dark electro-pop Pink Pill Program, Brad Ferguson has been quietly forging an identity of his own.

Bid farewell Brad the shadowy sideman; say hello to Bradley, the shadowy frontman.

"Bradley is my main focus right now, though I do still get involved with other things," Ferguson says.

"I've been writing a lot since I did the album and I'd like to keep this going for a while."

He will, however, report that he anticipates Joystick -- a project that teammed him with the wonderful Coco Love Alcorn -- may live to record again. "But," he adds, "we won't tour."

So Bradley it is. For now. And if Pink Pill Program is anything to go by, it/he may well be Ferguson's best bet to take the pennant. Regardless of how characteristically low-key its origins.

"It just came out of doing stuff on the computer and getting into writing mode," Ferguson says with a shrug. "I'm still learning how to get music that's in my head onto the computer before it's gone. I still lose a few."

Fortunately, he can put Pink Pill Program into the win column; its infectious blend of electronic and acoustic tones makes for a snappy bit of post-new-wave dance music in the tradition of, well, the name most often raised is that of Love and Rockets.

Ferguson stresses that Love and Rockets were not exactly his chosen role models.

"I'm familiar with Love and Rockets," he says, "but they're not exactly one of my favourite bands. Really, if I was directly influenced by anything it was more likely Squarepusher, or drum 'n' bass. That's what I was listening to at the time."

Listening quietly, that is. You have to, when you do not wish to disturb the neighbours. That, of course, also affects home recordings.

"I had to sing with my head under my desk so it wouldn't bother anyone," Ferguson says. "Next time, I will definitely use a studio, at least for the vocals."

And there's sure to be a next time, now that the self-released home recordings have been given a new life with a proper re-release. And a tour, which will bring him to the Live Lounge tomorrow.

"What do you get?" the multi-instrumentalist repeats when the question is asked of the live Bradley show.

"You get me, basically. Me and a lot of beats on a laptop. I do play acoustic guitar on the slower songs, and analog synth on others."

As for Live Lounge, "it sounds like a great idea," he says. "I'm surprised no one has done it before." - Ottawa Sun (The Scene-Cover story)


"Edmonton Vue Weekly interview(pinkpill)"

BRADLEY'S GOT A NEW PINK PILL PROGRAM

CAROLYN NIKODYM / carolyn@vueweekly.com

When you listen to Bradley’s recently re-released and revamped Pink Pill Program, you’re not at all surprised to hear a cover of the Cure’s “Love Song.” It’s not that the rest of the album conjures up Robert Smith and his band at all, but the well-known ballad shares a sensibility with Bradley’s low-key hybrid of acoustic and electronic bleeps and bloops.
What is surprising is what the choice of cover could have been.

“It wasn’t so much the Cure as it was that song. I just really love that song. I’m always kind of the sucker for the ballad on the album—on everybody’s album,” he says. “I don’t know why I picked that one—it was between that one and ‘Home Sweet Home’ by Mötley Crüe. Maybe the next album.”
But then again, the Vancouver musician (aka Brad Ferguson) did do tour time with Econoline Crush—a band that is probably closer to the Crüe than anything else he’s known for.

Between music school, touring with the likes of Lily Frost, Kristy Thirsk (of Delirium fame), producing and playing bass with the Modelos, he’s a busy musician who has been at it for over a decade.

“At this point they just call me up,” he says of sharing the stage with other bands. “I’ve done enough stuff now for enough people that I don’t have to go and pursue anything anymore. People see me play in different places and call me and ask me to do their shows.

“I love it,” he continues. “There’s stuff to be learned from everybody and the people that I am playing with are all great songwriters or great musicians or they seem to have risen above the pack a little.”

His resumé also includes a successful, albeit short-lived, turn in Joystick—a collaborative project with Coco Love Acorn—that made television folk come a-knocking.

“Joystick just ended up doing more of a studio project. We did the album and that was really the first music that I had ever written and the first collaboration I ever did—as far as a writing collaboration and a production collaboration,” he explains. “Mostly people from TV started to get into it, and we sold a bunch of tracks to TV shows, but as far as it lasting, it never went anywhere. And Coco’s touring constantly doing her solo thing.”

The pair had tracks end up on The L Word and Dead Zone, and more recently Bradley has done work for CBC’s Intelligence.

Re-released two weeks ago for Canada-wide distribution, Pink Pill Program blends elements of electronica with layered instrumentation and personal, slithery vocals—you can definitely discern that Bradley is a fan of Beck. Lyrically he isn’t at all satirically political, though, and sonically he doesn’t so much emulate the Californian scientologist as he does take the inspiration and cast into his own mould. And while it might be interesting to hear Bradley cover something like “Where it’s At,” it would be a hell of a lot more interesting to have him prick us with some Poison power ballad.

- Edmonton Vue Weekly


"BackStage Vancouver (MTW)"

When I first put in bradley’s album MountainTigerWolf, I have to admit that I was taken aback. It’s got a kind of a creepy / pop vibe that I have been waiting to hear for a long time. His rhythmic and spellbinding voice carries the album and some how gets you immediately into the songs. There is darkness to his lyrics, underlying metaphors to his words, and chorus structures to his tracks that mesmerize. I can’t help but be truly involved in the music when I listen.

“Everything Will Be Okay MM” is my favourite track of the album. This song to me has an anthemic quality; lyrics that ring out, harmonies and xylophone hits that remind me of a cross between the Get up Kids, and Oasis. There is defiantly something here I’ve never heard before, and I can’t get enough. - Colin Rink


"bradley-In Love With the Modern World"

BRADLEY
in love with the modern world
By Stefan Petersen

There’s certainly something intriguing about Vancouver native Bradley Ferguson, the one-man band behind bradley and the recently released MountainTigerWolf album.

From the outset, bradley's music prompts you to surrender your senses and be taken away on a journey. With apparent ease, he manages to send the listener into surreal and emotive landscapes with quirky, and somewhat chaotic, aural distractions. As bizarre as it is, it leaves listeners wanting to know more.

“Some people really like it and some people don’t know what to think of it,” declares Bradley. “There’s a certain sound in the Canadian music scene right now that couldn’t be further from what I’m doing, really.”

Having previously released Joystick, a 2005 collaborative electro/pop effort with Coco Love Alcorn, and often playing the part of the hired gun bass player for many bands, it is with bradley that he has been able to craft his own unique electro/acoustic blend.

MountainTigerWolf is bradley’s second album, the follow up to the 2007 release Pink Pill Program, and there is a sense of personality within the record that is delivered directly by the songwriter/producer himself. Created mostly with an analog Novation Bass Station synth and a computer, bradley has been able to fuse and manipulate the worlds of electronica and guitar to create his own unique and thought-provoking music.

So how exactly does one go about creating songs that don't appear to follow any pre-defined structure?

"Some tunes were completely written on guitar as like folk tunes sort of thing, but then it's like, ‘Well, this isn't really how I want to put it out there. I want it to be folk tunes with a whole different world attached,’" he explains.

The fact that bradley had never written a song before turning his computer into a studio somewhat explains the method within the madness. In simple terms he says, "Realistically having the whole computer era, for me, is magic." This has allowed him the freedom to explore and create music on his own timeline, something that is reflected in his experimental songwriting style. "I really can’t hang onto things that aren't kind of immediately working out for me. I just get too frustrated and too like, ‘This is totally awful,’" he adds.

Within this experimental setting, it seems fitting bradley would include a reworked cover of the David Bowie classic "Fame" – in this case, entitled "Fainne". Bradley enthused, "I love David Bowie and what he has kind of done over the years… Y'know, it's one groundbreaking musical style after another." The song itself, Bradley says, began to feel like one of his own, as did the second cover on the album, a beautifully worked take on the Great Aunt Ida track "Little Voice." There is a distinct craft in taking another artist's music and making it yours, and, unassumingly, bradley manages to weave his own unique magic into each track whilst paying homage to artists that both inspire and provoke him.

So what does the future hold for bradley? Having recently finished a tour supporting the LP release, he is in no hurry to get back on the road, instead preferring to look ahead to his upcoming Vancouver show and see where the album takes him. With an eye on a possible Canadian tour in the fall and the possibility of a European tour in the future, there will be no shortage of chances for fans to journey into bradley's world.
- BeatRoute (Story)


Discography

Joystick-Welcome to the Factory(2005)
bradley-pink pill program(2007)
bradley-MountainTigerWolf(2010)

Photos

Bio

BRADLEY began as his solo electro-pop follow up to the successful JOYSTICK project Brad created with singer Coco Love Alcorn (2004). Holing up in his home studio armed with his computer as a writing tool, Bradley created his debut Pink Pill Program album and released it through MapleNationWide in 2007.

2010 saw the release of his 2nd album MountainTigerWolf, released on the indie label Drip Audio and distributed by Fontana. As Robert Everett-Green noted in his disc of the Week Globe and Mail review "Bradley’s musical outlook encompasses the craft-conscious ethos of an old-school songwriter, the playground mentality of someone who likes to mess with synthesizers, and the tear-it-up sensibility of an unreconstructed punk..."

The music of BRADLEY and JOYSTICK has had strong support in the licensing world and can be heard on the shows: the L word, Godivas, Life with Derrick, Intelligence, Just Cause and The Dead Zone.

With strong support from Live Nation bradley has opened for Rich Aucoin, John K Samson, Sweet Thing, AWOLNATION, Liz Phair, The Pack AD and Uh Huh Her. In 2011 Brad received a Canada Council Arts Grant to travel to Paris and Berlin for two months to write for a new recording, he has recently received a Factor Independent Recording Loan to bring it to fruition.

The beats are pummelling and sputtering, the instrumentation over-the-top layered, the songs spliced in experimental ways. But just before the production gets too distracting, Bradley smartly balances things with sparser, more organic tunes that show off his strong voice, memorable melodies and songcraft....
NOW Magazine Toronto

He spurts out carefully crafted chunks of alt-pop beauty through strange electro-acoustic experimentation. Using a bric-a-brac array of synths, computers, drums machines and fuzzed-out guitars, Bradley hopscotches from early day Beck to latter day Jay Reatard.... bradley is the kind of self-made, electro-rock musician one could file under reclusive genius. The Vancouver Sun