about

Hey Exit was Brendan Landis' primary musical project from 2009 - 2021. Over this time the project covered quite a lot of ground, working in several musical traditions and drawing from many different styles within each:

• art music & long-form instrumentals (new age doom, electroacoustic composition, free improvisation, prepared guitar, plunderphonics)
• heavy music & non-music (harsh noise, industrial, grindcore)
• songwriting & short-form instrumentals (downer pop, airs for solo instruments or small ensembles)

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.

After forty five releases and one or two hundred shows, the Hey Exit project is retired for the foreseeable future. However, Brendan remains active in a number of other bands and projects:

• Receive is his current primary creative output — a heavy art rock quartet in which he sings and plays baritone guitar.
• Star Card is an alt rock band in which all members of Receive play different instruments. Brendan plays drums (hell yeah).
• Receiver is a downer-pop-slash-noise-table duo involving Brendan and Calley Nelson (who sings in Star Card and plays lead guitar in Receive).
• Advection is Brendan's solo project for electronic music and short-form instrumentals.
• Anura is a bedroom songwriting project that preceded Receive by a year or two. It sometimes threatens to resurface in one form or another.