Point blank, Brain Paint is an extremely visceral album title despite being two relatively innocuous words working together. It conjures more of a feeling than an image, and an almost forbidden one at that. IS that something we’re meant to comprehend? How would it actually feel?
It’s a scenario we can hold in our minds for a few seconds without feeling like we’re going to melt – but Maebe has a surprisingly cerebral sense of vision, and after hearing their new album a few times, we can safely say we’ll be listening to for years to come. Even if we have to wear some kind of protective hat.
In a genre that celebrates its artists on the basis of wordplay and puns alone, Brain Paint could have easily played it by the numbers and kept the progression lateral. Math rock offers a relatively huge palette to play with, but this album delivers so much more than anything average. In a word, it feels grand.
The last time we felt this great about the collision of post-rock, math rock, and sheer power was And So I Watch You From Afar‘s The Endless Shimmering, and we don’t say that lightly. You can tell they’re an influence for sure, but they’re an influence on hundreds if not thousands of bands, and Brain Paint still manages to stand out from the crowd for a number of reasons, all of them good.
(We’re not sure how many cranial jokes we can fit into an intro but we’re excited to pick Michael Astley-Brown’s brain about gear, creativity, collaborating with the band, etc.)
So how were they able to pull this off, you ask? Well we’re so glad you did, because we were asking the same thing. Luckily, Maebe’s main brain Michael Astely Brown was gracious enough to give us an inside scoop on the entire process. We talk about the evolution of demos, finding your own voice in the face of new and exciting gear, becoming a dad, and so much more. Enjoy!
FB: Brain Paint illustrates a really broad spectrum of emotion and must have taken a fair amount of time to put together – when did you start writing material for the record? When do songs usually come to you?
MAB: I’m lucky in that ideas come to me most times I pick up a guitar, so I’ve always got something on the back-burner. Writing for this album began in earnest at the tail end of 2023, shortly after the release of the second record, Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. We originally planned to put out an EP, but Ripcord Records convinced us to pursue an album. Those first five songs were finished back in April 2025. It pained me to sit on them, but I had other stuff going on: I was going to be a dad.
My daughter was born a few weeks after the EP was finished; whenever I could get her to sleep for a half-hour here or there, I was writing and demoing new songs to make up the rest of the album. The blueprint for “Downer” was recorded in 15 minutes while she was napping in the corner of the room. In stolen moments, I rifled through voice notes and uncovered the opening for Young Lungs. Our drummer, Nic, felt the album needed one more uptempo track. “God Wit” spawned from his drumbeat. Ephemeral was a spontaneous jam between myself, Nic and bassist Pat – the melody is identical to what we played in the rehearsal room; I just added an outro. This second batch of ideas was shorter, more to-the-point. We already had epics like “Do Not Take Risks”, “lower case song title” and “Auroraborus,” so it was about bringing balance to the record at that point. I finally realised that nobody needs an entire album of six-minute songs front to back. [laughs]
FB: Can you describe your usual demoing process?
MAB: Typically, I lay down guitar riffs first, double with bass, then either program a drum part or tweak something from a library of beats. I’ll play around with some floatier, more ethereal guitar parts at this stage – it’s worth saying that I deal almost exclusively in ambiguous chords rather than typical majors or minors. I want the listener to figure out how to feel about it.
Then it’s a case of feeling out where the song needs to go. I can feel an imaginary hand pulling me in a direction, but it often takes a few weeks of getting the song stuck in my head before I figure out where the destination is. It really feels out of my control, in the best possible way. The melodies and leads are usually the last parts to be added, and that requires the most work. If a melody isn’t swimming round my brain for hours afterwards, it isn’t good enough, and I’ll tweak it until it sticks. The last two Maebe records were essentially solo projects, so this time I was excited to record these demos and bring them to the rest of the band to shape up and add their own style. That’s most apparent on the outro to “Dripping Colour”, where Nic and Pat go off.
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FB: When it comes to the material that made it onto the record, do you remember which riffs or songs came to you first? Did those ideas structurally or tonally predict the shape of Brain Paint as you continued to write?
MAB: “Do Not Take Risks” was the first song I finished for the record, back in October 2023. It set the tone: it was bigger, more immediate, more focused than anything I’d made under the Maebe name so far. “Sadstorm” was a sadboi Instagram clip I put up around the same time. I’m extremely proud of that song. It wasn’t easy to record owing to all the time signature shifts, but it’s an absolute journey. What’s wild is that the opening riff for the song “Brain Paint” was initially in the running for the very first Maebe album, but I rejected it for sounding too much like And So I Watch You From Afar – it’s no secret that they are one of my biggest influences. I happened to be messing around with that line on my baritone Telecaster, and when it was transposed like that, suddenly, the rest of the song wrote itself. And hopefully it sounded just about different enough to ASIWYFA.
FB: The record has a lot of focus when it comes to memorable melodies and keeping them all separately interesting – can you talk about ways you changed or embellished things like leads or lead lines that carry said melody?
MAB: For me, the key is the energy of the track. You want the melody to match that feel and not take away from it. I messed around with “Dripping Colour” a bit on that front: in that first stop section, I wanted it to be hype-y at the start, then ease off as it leads into the next section. That took a bit of experimentation. God Wit was an absolute Frankenstein’s monster. It’s a combination of improv then figuring out how to translate the rhythmic energy to notes that channel the emotion.
But sometimes you want a melody that’s pulling when a riff is pushing – like the chiming arpeggios over the palm-muted chug in “Brain Paint.” I feel like I’m always treading a tightrope with melodies: I want there to be enough technique to make it interesting, but without making it total shred cheese. Fortunately, my abilities have a ceiling, so that usually solves the problem for me, ha.
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FB: There are some insane guitar tones on the album but they’re also aided by wicked amp and pedals. Can you talk about some of the challenges of getting a sound from your head or demo onto the final record, and translating these ideas through gear?
MAB: After six years of recording Maebe material, I’ve stumbled on a rig that lets me get my ideas down as quickly as possible. The Blackstar Amped 1 is a killer clean pedal platform and has some sick IRs and tweakability, so that has been the real game-changer for this record. There is no modeling – modern plugins are amazing, no question, but I fear the homogenization of guitar tone when everyone is using the exact same sounds. It doesn’t inspire me.
I’m kind of old-school in that respect, and that translates to my pedals. I love players who make stompboxes part of their personality – Mike Einziger and Tom Morello were my heroes growing up, and I obsessed over their ’boards. So I know what I need to sound like me. I can usually get my ideas down with some combination of the DigiTech Whammy, a room reverb, maybe a big tremolo picking delay, fuzz or a shimmery chorus. Those are essential to the emotional intent of a part for me. The rest is just icing on the cake.
FB: Conversely, gear ideally changes a tone for the better – what were some of the happy accidents or surprises you remember when it came down to recording?
MAB: To this day, I’m surprised when I improv a solo and it actually comes out listenable. “Brain Paint” and “Do Not Take Risks” are total stream-of-consciousness leads that I lifted from the original demos. Nic’s cymbal intro on “Dripping Colour” was a bit of a joke in the studio that we all ended up loving. My leads in the final chorus of “God Wit” have some crazy pitch tweaks where it sounds like I’m doing these crazy-fast hammer-ons, but it’s actually me pulling the string so far off the fretboard it goes up a full tone. I’ve never been able to nail that since!
FB: Speaking of gear and inspiration, you’re in a uniquely awesome position to get a look at new and exciting music gear as Digital Editor-in-Chief of Guitar World. Was there a piece of gear or equipment that caught your eye in the months leading up to recording that you knew had to feature on Brain Paint?
MAB: I get as excited for new gear launches as anyone else, but I thank my lucky stars that my tastes lie a bit more off the beaten track. Maybe this ties into the modeling thing or my past as a product demonstrator, but if I’m playing the newest, most-hyped piece of gear, I find I get into my head and start playing YouTuber John Mayer licks [laughs].
That said, I had a bunch of new gear I amassed between recording Rebirth. Relive. Repeat. and Brain Paint. The Walrus Audio Eons is my absolute favorite fuzz, so I was stoked to get that on there. It crops up on every song: I’ll usually layer riffs with that on one side and the Sinvertek Drive N5 (total sleeper distortion pedal) on the other. And despite everything I said about hype, I went big on the Strymon BlueSky on this album – there are some dreamy near-infinite reverbs that pop up here and there. I also enjoyed diving deeper into my Line 6 HX Stomp XL – those wonky synth sounds on “Auroraborus” were a highlight.
FB: Did you use more than one guitar for recording your parts on the album?
MAB: This ties in nicely to the last question, because I had a host of new guitars for this album. My Fender Japan Elemental Jazzmaster was the MVP for the standard and drop D-tuned songs. Its pickups are super-hi-fi and it has a coil-split, so it covered a heck of a lot of ground. I’ve got an old Road Worn Jazzmaster from a decade ago that handles some of the twangier moments – the rhythms on “Young Lungs” and leads on “Ephemeral.”
I was fortunate to visit Japan a couple years back and spent the whole trip looking for a guitar with a Sustainer pickup. I brought back a blue Fernandes offset which I’ve fallen in love with. That appears in the solo section in “lower case song title” and the outro of “Dripping Colour.” My Fender Blacktop Baritone Telecaster was essential once again for the drop-tuned stuff – especially Who Do You Think You Aren’t? It sounds nasty on that song. We used Duncan’s Player Telecaster and Will’s Player Stratocaster for some of the rhythm parts as well. Those sounded killer.
FB: If there were a signature Maebe Brain Paint pedal, what would it do?
MAB: Man, it would have to be some kind of multi-modulation thing that gets stupid-extreme. Maybe it runs everything through an envelope filter so it gets real squishy. Or some trippy drippy delay. Also with an envelope filter. I really need to mess around with envelope filters.
FB: Tom Peters is known for getting the absolute juice when it comes to a mix, especially when you follow it with mastering from Stephen Kerrison – can you talk about anything you did to prepare the record or takes themselves for mixing and mastering?
MAB: Tom’s band Alpha Male Tea Party are a huge influence on Maebe, so I did not want to present him with anything that would reveal how sloppy I really am! There was a bit of tidying up with timing and figuring out which parts the songs actually needed – we record a lot of layers. As it turned out, Tom was about to have his own baby, so there was a bit of time pressure there as well, but that sped up the decision-making process, which was probably a good thing for an indecisive person like myself.
With Stephen, the real challenge was making two different sessions recorded a year apart sound cohesive, so there was a bit of back and forth. But when you’re working with two people who just ‘get’ the music, it’s a joy. Tom added also some awesome EQ filtering ideas in several parts of the record that I’m going to have to steal for my pedalboard.
FB: Brain Paint feels like something that makes genuine effort to bridge math rock, post-rock, prog, and everything else a guitar nerd could possibly want in a record. What are your proudest / most favorite moments from creating and ultimately releasing the record?
MAB: First off, thank you. That means a lot. The diversity of this album is something I’m really proud of – we want to make the case that instrumental rock doesn’t need to be pigeonholed into math or post-rock or shred. We want to be the instrumental rock band for people who don’t think they like instrumental music. Angine de Poitrine’s recent virality proves that audiences are craving sounds that don’t fit with the norm. It gives us hope! But honestly, making an entire album with another group of people gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling inside. I’d kind of written off making music and leading a band in my twenties. My social anxiety wouldn’t let me do it. But this solo project has blossomed into a collaboration that I can’t wait to explore further on the next record. Just give us a couple years, yeah? I should probably focus on being a dad for a bit now [laughs]!
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