Cold Storage

Hey, I'm Brendan. This site is an archive for the music I made throughout the 2010s, mostly under the name Hey Exit.

Hey Exit was my primary music project for a little over a decade ('09-'21). It was mostly a solo endeavor, but I roped in some friends here and there. This site collects all the recordings, show photos, press, and ephemera from that time.

(It feels a little weird to be making such a thorough archive of my old noise music, but also, I believe very strongly in using the web this way — for documenting underground culture and the arts, relatively unmediated by corporations. Plus, honestly I still like most of the music.)

The project covered quite a lot of stylistic ground, working in several musical traditions and drawing from many genres within each:

• art music and long-form instrumentalsnew age doom, plunderphonics, very long solo pieces, free improvisation, electroacoustic composition
• songwriting and short-form instrumentalsslowcore and downer pop, airs for solo instruments and small ensembles
• heavy music and non-musicharsh noise, industrial, grindcore, works for prepared guitar

Despite this restless approach to style and tradition, there are several throughlines in the work: music as spiritual practice, contrasting extremes presented as necessary opposites, and the dilemma of making space for hope and horror in equal measure.

Some of the creative threads explored throughout the Hey Exit catalog went on to become their own projects. These, as well as several collaborative projects from aroud the same time, are detailed on the related projects page.

After forty-plus releases and one or two hundred shows, Hey Exit is retired for the foreseeable future. I still play a lot of music, which you can check out on the current projects page.

Feel free to get in touch at ten.semanwols@b.