ORIGINAL PHOTO CREDIT: Ebony Lamb
Wellington/ Pōneke-based multi-instrumentalist Grayson Gilmour has announced Holding Patterns — his first full-length release in over six years due out November 3rd via Flying Nun Records. The new album will be avaliable digitally and on a range of limited edition coloured vinyl.
Grayson Gilmour is an award-winning song writer, film score composer and performer. He has toured internationally as both a solo artist, and part of the post-punk outfit So So Modern, releasing works on labels all around the world. Following his previous albums No Constellation (2010), Infinite Life! (2014), and Otherness (2017), the upcoming Holding Patterns album is Gilmour’s fourth full-length release with New Zealand indie label Flying Nun Records.
Today, Grayson has also shared the first taste from the album in the new single and video for ‘Maat Mons’. Overhead projectors might make you think of singing in school assembly, but in the ‘Maat Mons’ video by director Jesse Taylor Smith, OHP transparencies were layered, melted and backlit to create this unique start stop motion music video.
Grayson Gilmour on the new single, has said “‘Maat Mons’ existential / cosmic wonder runs amok! Sometimes the seemingly interconnected nature of everything takes hold of my imagination in a song like this – how else can I explain writing about the astral plane, life cycles, our devastation of earth, and name it after the highest volcano on planet Venus? Think of it as the musical equivalent of a film like Everything, Everywhere All At Once — creating music is how I find myself in, and make sense of the universe.”
Curiosity is the driving force behind Grayson’s musical journey. Having released his previous multifaceted album Otherness (complete with its 360° music videos and web sampler) to critical acclaim, he is currently lecturing at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, between film scoring projects and live performances. In the time since the release of Otherness in 2017, Grayson has become a parent of two. A typical response to becoming a parent might be that you slow down and make gentle music – while an element of that might be true within Holding Patterns, for the most part Grayson wanted to create rhythmically driven music that would allow him to dance through all the turbulence of parenthood.
“Music has always been a form of escapism for me – a remedy of sorts – it always fulfills something that my life or surroundings can’t. I guess while I was tip-toeing around a sleeping baby during the pandemic lockdowns, what I really wanted to do was be loud! Luckily, I could channel this energy into my music.”
On the name of the project, Grayson says “I was drawn to ‘Holding Patterns’ as a title for the album because it spoke to the sensation of putting my life on hold while I figured out who I was, and wanted to be, as a parent. The meaning is multifaceted – it’s inherently intimate, but it’s also bittersweet – temporary, fleeting.”
Curious to work with different instrumentation, Grayson Gilmour ensured that there is practically no guitar on Holding Patterns. Any conventional piano or key parts were eventually rearranged into winds, strings or weird synth textures. Consequently, Holding Patterns is the artist’s most collaborative album to date. Improvisation was encouraged in most of the recording sessions with collaborators – the instrumental ‘Holding Patterns’ was actually completely improvised and re-assembled in the studio.
Furthermore, the more people he invited into the album; the more enjoyable it became – which perhaps explains why there are so many contributors.
Grayson came across Bryce Wymer’s art via a feature in Juxtapoz Magazine years ago and felt an immediate connection with it. He commissioned Bryce to design the Holding Patterns album artwork, and the relationship between the visual and aural have proven to be a perfect pairing.
“I guess one of the side-effects of the pandemic / working from home was that I became comfortable with contacting people out-of-the-blue. Bryce was immediately keen and we worked really well together – sharing a lot of music interests and embarrassing sympathies for cliché hardcore bands!”
Holding Patterns is out on the 3rd November 2023 via Flying Nun Records and will be available digitally, and on a range of limited edition coloured vinyl; red, blue, yellow or black.