Mild High Club

The Arc of Mild High Club

The pivots — what forced Mild High Club to reinvent.

1. 01

   The Stones Throw Tapes

   Moving from Chicago to LA and signing to a hip-hop stronghold like Stones Throw changed the trajectory of Brettin’s bedroom recordings. He was pulling from the label’s crate-digging aesthetic, treating his own jazz-pop compositions like they were rare library music samples waiting to be found. The result was Timeline, a record that sounds like a lost 1970s private press vinyl discovered in a thrift store bin. You hear it in the flutter of the tape and the way the vocals sit buried just beneath the warbling keyboards.

2. 02

   The Melbourne Exchange

   The collaboration with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard at Flightless Records in 2017 forced Brettin out of his solitary writing process and into a high-speed improvisational environment. Working with Stu Mackenzie meant blending MHC's lounge-jazz leanings with Gizzard’s microtonal freakouts and heavy flute arrangements. It pushed the project toward a more collaborative, live-band feel that stripped away some of the hazy insulation of his early work. This era defined the 'Sketches' sound—snappy, rhythmically complex, and far more expansive than a four-track could handle.

Influences

• Steely Dan — Brettin has explicitly cited Fagen and Becker’s obsessive studio perfectionism as the North Star for his chord progressions. You hear it in the 'mu major' chords and the slick, cynical jazz-pop structures on Skiptracing. It is the blueprint for his entire harmonic vocabulary.
• Todd Rundgren — The one-man-studio wizardry of A Wizard, a True Star is the direct ancestor to Brettin’s solo recording approach. The eccentric transitions and the heavy use of phased-out synthesizers mirror Rundgren’s early 70s output. It’s that specific brand of 'Philadelphia soul meets experimental electronics' that MHC lives in.
• The United States of America — Brettin pointed to Joseph Byrd’s 1968 psych-experimental project as a primary influence for his vintage gear obsessions. The use of early ring modulators and oscillators on their self-titled record directly informs the synth textures on Timeline. It’s 1960s avant-garde disguised as pop music.
• The Beatles — He’s gone on record stating that Revolver is the reason he started manipulating tape speeds and experimenting with backwards masking. The melodic phrasing on songs like 'Windowpane' is a straight line back to McCartney’s 1966 output. It’s the foundational DNA for any psych-pop project that prioritizes melody over noise.
• Antonio Carlos Jobim — The Bossa Nova influence isn't a guess; Brettin studied jazz and has frequently name-dropped Jobim when discussing his rhythmic sensibilities. You hear the Brazilian influence in the nylon-string guitar patterns and the laid-back, syncopated lounge feel of the later MHC tracks. It’s what keeps the music from feeling too stiff or academic.