Inventive guitarist, banjoist, and composer Brandon Seabrook returns with Hellbent Daydream, a mesmerizing new album that leans fully into dream logic, surreal storytelling, and the creative friction that has long defined his music. Set for release on February 20, 2026 via Pyroclastic Records, the album introduces a striking new quartet featuring pianist and synthesist Elias Stemeseder, bassist Henry Fraser, and violinist Erica Dicker—an ensemble that gives Seabrook an expansive, cinematic canvas for his most atmospheric work to date.
The title Hellbent Daydream hints at contradiction. “Hellbent” suggests manic drive and obsession, while “daydream” evokes whimsy, drift, and reverie. That tension is exactly where Seabrook thrives. His music has always been built on conceptual collisions—serious chops paired with manic intensity, precision coexisting with chaos—and this album refines that approach into something both more welcoming and more uncanny. The visceral and the fanciful sit side by side, not as opposites, but as interdependent forces.
The album follows two very different but equally daring Pyroclastic releases: the ferocious 2023 octet statement brutalovechamp and the intimate, exploratory 2024 solo album Object of Unknown Function. Hellbent Daydream expands Seabrook’s sonic world once again, debuting an unconventional quartet that grew out of a trio he has led in recent years with Henry Fraser and Erica Dicker. Fraser, a longtime collaborator, and Dicker share a natural blend that quickly became central to the band’s identity.
“Henry and Erica blend together so well,” Seabrook says. “After a number of gigs together we discovered that we all shared an amazing chemistry. They both bring an excitement, a verve, and an intensity to the music. Then I thought that the addition of Elias’ piano and synth would allow the music to become more cinematic and open up some more of the emotional exposition.”
That expanded palette invites an unusually wide range of influences to swirl together. The dark theatricality of Stephen Sondheim collides with the lush, insinuating harmonies of the late-period Beach Boys. Chopinesque chamber romanticism is refracted through Appalachian folk melody, creating music that feels simultaneously familiar and slightly unmoored. For an artist who has long resisted overt Americana, the album’s explicit American influence is especially striking—most notably on “The Arkansas Tattler,” a mischievous reimagining inspired by the folk tune “The Arkansas Traveler.”
Seabrook’s relationship to the banjo underscores this shift. In the past, he deliberately set the instrument against its traditional context, using it for blistering, metal-adjacent riffery rather than roots music. That ferocity hasn’t disappeared. It erupts in the overdriven climax of the somnambulant danse macabre “Name Dropping is the Lowest Form of Communication” and in the agitated, monolithic string writing of “Existential Banger Infinite Calling.” But here, those moments are framed within a broader narrative arc—one guided less by linear logic than by the strange coherence of dreams.
Dream imagery runs throughout the album, shaping both its titles and its emotional flow. The music doesn’t always explain itself, but it feels internally consistent, pulling the listener through a sequence of moods that make emotional sense even when they resist straightforward interpretation. “Human beings are creatures of story,” Seabrook reflects. “Experimenting and searching for new ways to tell stories and bring the listener along is important to me. I really wanted this album to dwell in that daydream landscape—still subversive, but in a more welcoming atmosphere.”
That balance between challenge and invitation has defined Seabrook’s career. A fixture of New York’s avant-garde scene, he has been described by Rolling Stone’s Hank Shteamer as a musician whose bands combine “serious chops with manic intensity and a left-field compositional vision,” while Premier Guitar’s Ryan Reed has called him a “resident chaos architect” exploring everything from jazz-fusion to brutal prog and heavy rock. Across eleven albums as a leader and collaborations with artists ranging from Anthony Braxton and Cécile McLorin Salvant to David Byrne and Mike Watt, Seabrook has consistently refused to sit still.
Released by Pyroclastic Records—founded by pianist-composer Kris Davis to support artists who challenge genre boundaries—Hellbent Daydream feels like a natural extension of that mission. It is music that embraces contradiction, invites curiosity, and trusts listeners to follow its strange internal compass. In doing so, Brandon Seabrook offers not just another bold chapter in his catalog, but an immersive, slightly tilted world that rewards surrender as much as analysis.
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