Bradley Jay, the celebrated Boston-based deejay who continues to jumble and push musical genres on the radio and at festivals and clubs, creates house-rocking mash ups live on-the-spot, swirling together clips from a diverse array of great artists over his own original tracks, forging an invigorating, unforgettable sonic tapestry audiences relish. The progressive, mad musical scientist also includes full covers of cool tracks and original songs, both rock and electronic, in his sets. www.bradleyjay.com
Compelling to a wide swath of listeners for its bracing and unpredictable mix of musical hooks from cool favorites and evocative original compositions, Bradley Jay’s hybrid compositions tap rock and electronic foundations, forging an original new millennium take on genre-blurring music. Fans grooving to hypnotic beats cheer when they hear drums from Radiohead and guitars from Black Sabbath and Beats from Trent Reznor, with vocals from Funkytown Lipps Inc or a serving of hand-crafted original techno beats pulsing under a mélange of drums and keys from Inna A Gadda Da Vida melded with guitars from Bowie or Rage Against the Machine.
As a solo deejay/sound collage artist and live performance digital composer, Bradley Jay has entertained thousands at River Rave and other festivals, numerous clubs and colleges in the northeast. Tracks from his debut album, Drive, (available on iTunes) continue to stream onto the airwaves on both coasts as a deejay select pick. Presently he spins for Boston College radio, www.wzbc.org, a gig he’s had since graduating UNH/Durham in the late 1970s, in a show called Sound Syrup.
The seeds of this new hybrid music were planted when Bradley Jay, onetime keeper of the Sex Palace (as well as Friday Night Meltdown and Cyber Sounds) at Boston’s number one rock station, WBCN (and now also the host of Jay Talking on Boston’s number one news radio station, WBZ) interviewed Fatboy Slim in the late 1990s. There was no way to know that the latter would deem the former cool enough to feature him as the lead in to Rockefeller Skank, the huge hit on his 1998, You’ve Come a Long Way Baby album. Perhaps inspired by the Brit Big Beat maestro, the Boston music man released several underground hits, laying his voice and instrumentals (guitar, keyboards) over original compositions of dense rock-infused beats and soundscapes. Thus, the fearless DJ morphed into a recording artist known for his blend of sweeping vocals, mash up of Berlin-style techno and rock riffs, punctuated with spontaneous outbursts on guitar, drums and keyboards.