Manawatu musician goes 360
Being as dense as possible without overwhelming the senses is the modus operandi behind musician Grayson Gilmour’s latest solo offering, which takes music videos to a whole new space.
The Palmerston North-raised, but Wellington-based musician, released his latest single Hundred Waters on Friday, complete with a unique 360-degree music video.
Viewers can turn the video, much like you can when looking at 360-degree photos people take and post on Facebook, to take in the visual kaleidoscope crafted by Kiwi expat Parrallel Teeth.
The big drawcard is the fact the different parts of the audio move along with the visuals. A falsetto vocal floats from the left to the centre, the percussion goes from eardrum to eardrum and different keyboard lines come in and out of focus.
‘‘Music videos all seem to fit a certain shape and form,’’ Gilmour said. ‘‘I could have just made another music video, or try to step outside of that shape somewhat and try to engage with people differently. I was going for an immersive textural experience.’’
Gilmour’s music has always had an element of the immersive, especially his 2014 album Infinite Life, which was nominated for best alternative album at the New Zealand Music Awards. Keyboards, layers of harmonised vocals and heavily delayed guitars blended with samples and textural drums to create a lush soundscape.
Gilmour said he was going down the same aural road for his upcoming album Otherness, due for release near the middle of the year.
But while Infinite Life was about figuring out how to put samples, many of them collected from random cassettes, into his music, Otherness has a stronger focus on the songs themselves. ‘‘I listen to Infinite Life now and it’s pretty whack by comparison,’’ he said.
Otherness has also seen him writing parts for a string quartet, which is best heard at the end of Hundred Waters.
While cello and violin have featured on previous recordings, they were often warped post-recording, he said.
‘‘I wanted to take a bit more of a structured approach with the strings... and I wanted to harness the power of those performers. A lot of it is just allowing myself the time and the budget to do that. It’s just a patience thing.’’
There has also been fitting in the album around other projects. An in-demand and award-winning film score composer, he has been busy on projects that may see the light of day at film festivals in the next year.
There is also a collaboration he did with the Red Bull Music Academy awaiting release. In between all that, he put himself into musical boot camp for two weeks before New Year’s Eve to reform his postpunk band So So Modern for a oneoff performance.
But fans of the band hoping for a solid run of shows will have to temper expectations. ‘‘We thought of doing other shows, but that was a pretty ideal setting to just come back and play a show,’’ he said.