Artist Spotlight: Bad Cadmium
Artist Spotlight: Bad Cadmium
Bad Cadmium is the solo project of a Bristol-based musician who writes, plays and records every part of his own music — a one-person band moving between psychedelic synth-pop and, most recently, a turn toward something raw and more direct. We sat down with him to talk about Mirtazapine Dreams, the upcoming indie rock album he recorded with us at Spirit Studios, and the decision to step back from years of meticulous, heavily-produced songwriting in favour of just letting things happen.
Q: Tell us a bit about yourself and your music — who are you, and what would you want a first-time listener to know?
I'm an amateur musician who makes music as a hobby — and because I need an outlet for the music that pours into my brain constantly. So far, I've played all the instruments and written every part for all the music I've recorded as Bad Cadmium.
Q: How did you get started making music? Was there a specific moment that pulled you in?
I was always making up bits of songs and playing imaginary games with friends where we were in a band, but my older brother started learning guitar, which inspired me. I started guitar lessons at 9 years old and have been writing music ever since.
Q: What does a typical writing or production session look like for you? Are you the type to work fast and intuitively, or slow and meticulous?
It's very varied, but usually I write on guitar. Sometimes a song will come to me nearly fully formed, sometimes I'll keep coming back to it over weeks, months or years, tweaking and iterating until I'm happy with it. Mirtazapine Dreams, which we recorded at Spirit Studios, was an attempt to move away from the meticulous and heavily worked writing and production style I'd been using for previous projects. Instead, I allowed myself a lot of freedom to just write whatever came to mind.
Q: Who or what are you drawing influence from at the moment?
I drew a lot of influence from the Beatles while writing and recording Mirtazapine Dreams. Stornoway, and their use of a very wide range of different instruments, were also a core influence — they're probably most to blame for the range of strange and wonderful instruments that can be heard across the album. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel was a major inspiration too, though I think the sonic influence is less obvious in the finished project.
Beyond other artists, I'm often influenced by literature — Kurt Vonnegut references often make it into my lyrics — philosophy (I studied it at university and it bleeds into everything I make), and sometimes just everyday conversations. "If I was a triangle I could dance to this song" was an offhand comment a friend made late one night while we were listening to Kadhja Bonet, and it's stuck with me ever since.
I'm also drawn to a lot of psychedelic art, in various forms. I think that shaped the sound of Mirtazapine Dreams a great deal — I was trying to capture something that suggested a liminal space between dreaming and waking.
Q: Is there a piece of gear, software, or technique you couldn't make your current music without?
I'm not much of a gearhead, if I'm honest. I love gear and get excited by the chance to play different instruments, but I've never gotten deep into mics or preamps. For this album, I think I used a guitar on every track — though which guitar often came down to whatever was available from the studio's gear library on the day.
When I'm demoing or mixing, I use Logic Pro X. I started with GarageBand as a teenager, then moved to a cracked version of Logic, and never bothered learning anything else.
The honest answer, though, is that I couldn't have made this project without Ste at Fabrik Audio. I've only ever done home recording with fairly simple interfaces. Being able to understand and use the desks at Spirit, to know the different mics and patterns and exactly where and when to use each one — that's not something I could have done myself. I'd just turn up and play, while everything else got taken care of.
Q: What's the story behind the album we worked on together — where did it start, and how did it change along the way?
It started in early 2023 as a reaction to how overproduced and overworked my previous projects had become. I wanted to write something more straightforward, less controlled. At the same time, I'd been listening to a lot of the Beatles, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and other guitar-and-vocal artists, which was a real shift from the heavily electronic music I'd been focused on before.
I started home demoing, but couldn't get much of anything usable. Early on, with Bad Cadmium, I'd actually leaned into heavy synth use partly because it had been so hard to get a professional-sounding guitar or bass in my bedroom. Once we got into Spirit and started recording with a full kit and amped guitars, the project took on a real life — before that, it had just been an embryo.
Q: Was there a moment during writing or recording it where something unexpected happened that ended up shaping the final result?
The first song we tracked, Thick as Thieves, had originally been written as a full band piece, with drums. But it was our first studio session, before I'd even had a lesson on setting up drum mics, so we improvised and ended up doing it fully acoustic instead. I genuinely can't imagine that song with drums now — the claps and guitar-body-tapping feel like the only percussion it could ever have had.
Q: What does the local or wider music scene look like from where you're standing right now?
I've been living in Bristol for the past year and a half, and there's a very active non-professional music scene here. Bars have live music seven nights a week, open mics where people are doing genuinely innovative things rather than the expected covers, and regular jam nights where different musicians get up and play together on the spot. There's a strong world music presence too — I recently saw Dele Sosimi live, who was previously in Fela Kuti's band. It's an invigorating place to be a musician.
Q: What's next for you?
First, finishing Mirtazapine Dreams and getting it released. After that, I'll need a new idea — and right now I genuinely have none. I always have to finish and release a project before I can even start thinking about what comes next. That said, I've been considering whether some kind of collaboration might be on the cards. The last three projects have all been solo, me writing and playing every note — sometimes to the song's detriment. Listening back to Mirtazapine Dreams, I do sometimes wonder how it might sound with an actual drummer behind the kit.
Q: If someone's never heard your music before, what's the one track they should start with?
My back catalogue is quite starkly split between a psychedelic synth-pop period — two EPs — and this upcoming indie rock album, so there's no single obvious entry point. But I'm currently finishing a track called Thin Place, which I plan to open the new album with, so that feels like the right place to start.
What I like about it is the structure — it's definitely not verse-chorus-verse-chorus. And in terms of the arrangement, listen for the piano with the heavily automated delay.
Mirtazapine Dreams is coming soon from Bad Cadmium. Keep an eye on Spotify for the release.
If you're working on something and want to talk through recording, mixing or mastering, — we'd love to hear what you're making.
