Rather than driving ideas to a clean finish, Hellbent Daydream lets phrases fray, rhythms wobble, and tones change shape midstream
Pyroclastic Records
Brandon Seabrook – guitars & banjo; Henry Fraser – bass; Erica Dicker – violin; Elias Stemeseder – piano & synthesizers
Brandon Seabrook’s Hellbent Daydream opens up a dense, active sound world, with strings, keys, and electronics all pulling from different directions. Strings buzz, clatter, and shriek; keys ring out and hang in the air; odd little mechanical sounds drift in and out. Even with all that motion, the ear keeps finding a pulse to follow, a repeated figure that settles in and gives the music shape.
Seabrook is a New York–based guitarist and banjoist who’s been a fixture in the city’s avant-garde scene for years, turning up in settings that pull from punk, jazz, and experimental music without settling comfortably into any one lane. Across more than a decade of albums and collaborations, he’s built a reputation for music that’s oddly playful.
Sometimes Seabrook’s guitar sounds almost toy-like, notes pinging and resonating as if struck rather than played. Elsewhere it turns harsh and physical, strings yanked hard enough to sound angry. The banjo occasionally grounds the music in something older and more rural, especially when Erica Dicker’s violin leans into a fiddle-like role, bow sawing back and forth with a raw, stubborn insistence, most clearly on “The Arkansas Tattler.” Those Appalachian echoes don’t come off as nostalgic; they feel repurposed, dropped into a setting where they rub up against synthesizer tones that shimmer and squeal like overheated machinery.
Bass and piano often sound like they’re pulling in slightly different directions. Henry Fraser’s bass is a presence you feel in your chest, whether he’s bowing long, tuba-like notes or plucking hard enough to make the strings thud and growl. Elias Stemeseder’s piano and synthesizers add both weight and atmosphere—single notes ringing out in cavernous space, clunky chords hammered down, smeared runs sliding across the keyboard. On “Existential Banger Infinite Ceiling,” those sounds echo back and forth, building toward something uneasy before the piano backs off, slows down, and almost seems to apologize for the noise it just made.
What ties the album together is its emotional tension. Beneath the humorous clatter, there’s a persistent sense of unease. Pretty moments turn jagged without warning. Waltz-like rhythms drift off balance, never fully settling. Some passages feel like they’re gearing up for something big, only to stall out and fade. When the album finally slows to a stop, it does so deliberately, like a ferris wheel easing back into place, ending on a metallic clang that feels both abrupt and earned.
Rather than driving ideas to a clean finish, Hellbent Daydream lets phrases fray, rhythms wobble, and tones change shape midstream. Ideas stretch, pull back, and reappear in altered form, lingering just long enough to reshape the music before moving on.
