07/25/2025
NEW ALBUM OUT NOW FROM THE HOUSING CRISIS! Stream it at https://hypeddit.com/thehousingcrisis/contentkarma
The Housing Crisis has never been a project typified by stagnancy. Their first album, the acoustic folk pop Astral Apartments, stands in stark contrast to the electronic sound of their sophomore Trivial in the Greater Picture. The difference between their second and their upcoming third album, Content Karma, is more of a subtle stylistic change. Early listeners have described it to songwriter Dylan O’Bryan as the most cohesive Housing Crisis record, even though some songs are purely electronic and some have the same folk pop sound as the first album. Content Karma is an album that brings together all of O’Bryan’s influences to define the sound of The Housing Crisis.
“Content Karma is a bit weirder, maybe the weirdest in some ways. This time around there are different life changes in the background,” O’Bryan says, referring to his recent move from Gainesville, Florida to Atlanta to keep developing his music and audio engineering career. “It’s been a big shift. I’m a little fish in a big pond again.” Most of the songs on Content Karma were written in Atlanta, minus a few older ones written in Gainesville: Turn in the Fall, Barely Bonded, and Pain in a Row.
O’Bryan is excited to keep his momentum going; Content Karma will be The Housing Crisis’s third album in three years. “I made a more concerted effort to use similar sounds. Content Karma is a more structured album than I’ve ever made,” according to O’Bryan. He created a synthesized bass sound to use over multiple songs, and tried to use the same Moog patch sound across as many songs as possible. He attributes this more consistent sound design methodology to his work outside of making music, as a professional audio engineer at several Atlanta music venues. “Being an audio engineer means I’m exposed to a lot of great electronic artists at work, especially living in Atlanta. It’s inspiring,” O’Bryan says.
Johanna Warren is featured on two singles - Never Enough and Barely Bonded. O’Bryan collaborated with the musician and artist on her performance art piece “Human Food,” facing the unique creative challenge of writing music for a visual art installation. O’Bryan composed over an hour of electronic music and performed it live for over three hours. Another creative detour on the road from making Content Karma was a dip into the world of film scoring - O’Bryan composed his own original electronic score to Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) and performed it live at a sold out screening at the historic Hippodrome Cinema.
O’Bryan continues to be influenced by eccentric multinstrumentalists, such as the early albums by Beck. Lyrically, O’Bryan takes inspiration from Stephen Malkmus of Pavement, and admires how Alex G blends acoustic and electronic sounds. With each Housing Crisis album, it becomes more and more of a challenge to find direct comparisons as to who O’Bryan sounds like.
Dylan O’Bryan showcases his talents as the premier songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist of the project. Additionally, Content Karma was produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by O’Bryan as well. This is the first Housing Crisis release mastered by O’Bryan himself; mastering was previously the only task he would delegate to someone else. Never Enough and Barely Bonded feature vocals by Johanna Warren, Pain in a Row, Turn in the Fall, and Barely Bonded feature cello by Xander Boggs, and Sleep Marathon features saxophone by Aidan Caughy.
