Dan Bradley

Dan Bradley

Dan discovered guitar in his early teens – playing every day on a sunburst Les Paul copy he still regrets selling – and has never stopped. He studied English at Cambridge then spent several years working in Japan, addicted to karaoke and manga. His fiction, music journalism, essays and translations from Japanese have appeared in Granta, The Guardian and The Quietus, among others. He plays a battered but cherished Thunderbird in progressive sludge-metal band URZAH.

Latest articles by Dan Bradley

Shem Lucas of Lowen

Meet Lowen, the heavy trailblazers defying metal rules by playing prog-doom in Middle Eastern and North African styles

By Dan Bradley published

Guitarist Shem Lucas and vocalist Nina Saeidi on why 4/4 is the “corset of music”, blending 7-string metal tones with orchestral Middle Eastern polyrhythms and microtonal scales, and why it’s no problem that they started out relatively late

Bands
Chat Pile

Meet Chat Pile, the sludge metallers shouting down the “tone lords” and “goobers” ruining guitar culture

By Dan Bradley published

The self-taught DIY quartet are making seismic waves across the noise rock scene – and they’re doing it with cult electrics, solid-state amps and a baritone that’s neither a “djent stick” nor “a surf guitar made of plastic”

Bands
BIG|BRAVE

“We don’t rely on fretboard technique”: BIG|BRAVE conjure some of today’s most thrilling guitar tones

By Dan Bradley published

A Chaos of Flowers finds the Canadian trio broadening their otherworldly sound as they look forward to “dismantling the little boys’ club” of heavy music. But try as they might, they can’t turn down the volume – this is vital guitar music made to be performed loud

Bands