Mock Media Don’t Want Your Algorithm

The Vernon quartet’s new album Rat Bastard is a fiercely alive mix of post-punk, dub, techno and basement-show energy.

By Sebastian Buzzalino

Published on July 14, 2026

Do you remember rock and roll radio? Mock Media do — or at least the idea of it. The thrill of stumbling onto something loud, strange and alive. Something that sounds less engineered for playlists than ripped out of a sweaty practice space at 1 a.m.

That spirit runs through Rat Bastard, the North Okanagan quartet’s latest album and second release on Mac DeMarco’s aptly titled Mac’s Record Label. It’s a record that feels gloriously unconcerned with coherence in the traditional sense. Post-punk bleeds into dub, New Wave gives way to thrash guitars and warped dance beats, and somehow it all holds together through sheer conviction.

“It felt really good because it was like, finally, we made that,” says guitarist and vocalist Evan Aasen. “There were ideas deep, deep down that finally came out.”

Mock Media — completed by Garnet Aronyk Muhammad, Austin Boylan and Bennett Smith — grew up together in Vernon, BC, playing basement shows in a tiny local punk scene before splintering into other projects including Crack Cloud, Pottery, NOV3L and Painted Fruits. Eventually, they circled back to each other.

“I was like, ‘These three other guys — this is it. Why aren’t we all in a band?’” Aasen says. “Then we formed Mock Media and it works.”

That chemistry is the real engine behind Rat Bastard. The album doesn’t sound like four musicians carefully plotting career moves. It sounds like four friends chasing momentum wherever it leads them.

Opener “Mock City Rock” charges out of the gate like a long-lost Cars single before the record veers into murkier territory. “City’s On Fire” borrows from dub and reggae traditions, while the closing track “Straight Line” spirals into pounding techno rhythms and blown-out euphoria. It’s messy, ambitious and refreshingly difficult to pin down.

“If we’re laughing when we’re making something, then it’s good,” says Aasen. “If we’re trying too hard to make it cool, then it ends up not being cool at all.”

That refusal to overthink things is part of what caught DeMarco’s attention while the band was touring. After signing them to the label, he invited Mock Media to open dates on his sprawling Guitar tour across the United States, exposing the band to crowds packed with younger fans experiencing live music for the first time.

“There’ll be these teenagers that are hyped and want to buy shirts,” says Aasen. “Some of them are like, ‘You’re the first band I’ve ever seen live.’ That’s awesome.”

For Mock Media, live performance remains the entire point. The band speak about recorded music almost like a necessary compromise — useful documentation, but never quite the real thing.

“We’ll work so hard on a song, then we go play it live and it’s like, ‘There. That’s what I wanted it to sound like,’” Aasen says. “You have to see it being made in front of you. You have to feel it.”

That feeling pulses through Rat Bastard. Beneath the stylistic left turns and chaotic genre collisions is something surprisingly pure: four lifelong friends still finding joy in making noise together.

In an era where so much music feels flattened by optimization and endless content churn, Mock Media offer something looser, stranger and far more human. The songs twist unpredictably because the band allow themselves to follow instinct instead of strategy. The point isn’t perfection. The point is freedom.

“At the end of the day,” Aasen says, “we’re not doing it for anything else.”

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