Susan bear

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Introducing queer musician & producer Susan Bear (FKA Good Dog), a much respected and sought-after stalwart of the Scottish music scene and a lynchpin of Lost Map Records. Whether as bassist and keyboardist, producer, songwriter, sound-designer, or something in between, Suse has variously worked with Lost Map artists including Tuff Love, Pictish Trail and Martha Ffion, as well as The Pastels, Tracyanne & Danny, Malcolm Middleton, Poster Paints, Karine Polwart, Amunda (Bossy Love) and on a variety of theatre projects.

Susan Bear’s debut album Creature – released under her previous moniker, Good Dog, and featuring the widely Spotify playlisted track ‘Floating’ – was released in 2020 (“Gentle, dreamy mood music” – The Scotsman). Its 15 tracks represent, explains Suse, “kind of a diary of my 20s”.

A 10-track album, Alter, followed in June 2022. Played, recorded, produced and mixed entirely by Suse in her Glasgow studio, it included the singles, ‘Mario Golf 2’, ‘Swimming Lessons’ and ‘M6’ - a hazy lo-fi pop gem about reflecting on bad decisions in the past, and “observing memories from a safe place (the present)” - which received support at BBC Radio from folks such as Radcliffe & Maconie, Amy Lamé, Vic Galloway and Roddy Hart. In a Lost Map label profile by Bandcamp Daily, writer Will Ainsley singled out Alter as a personal favourite. “There are so many excellent things put out by Lost Map,” he wrote, “but Alter has my heart.”

Suse’s third album, Algorithmic Mood Music, due for release on 28th June 2024, sees her kick things in a whole new direction, with a record that’s all about “my relationship with music and making music,” as she puts it. Written and recorded in dribs and drabs over three years, it was totally self-made in her home studio, like all of Suse’s music to date has been. The title is a sarcastic reference to the way so much music today is designed to satisfy streaming service algorithms, by rounding off all the rough edges, and reducing complex and messy human emotions to one-size-fits-all phoney feelings.

“I usually make quite genre mixed albums,” says Suse, “and in today’s world MOOD MUSIC (music all of a similar genre and instrumentation) does well on streaming services, as it works in the background of doing tasks rather than for active listening, so it can be streamed in the millions. There are also quite a few tracks on this that are probably less ‘song-y’ than I usually make, so it’s maybe a bit more mood-music-y than usual.”