Biophilia Recordings
Gian SlaterGrey is Ground2021From the first bars of ​Gian Slater’​s new album ​Grey is Ground​, there is an unexpected serenity to the vocal melodies – given the restless, complex grooves underneath. Slater’s crystalline voice is unhurried as the accompanying rhythms boil and shift. The juxtaposition is deliberate. Musically and lyrically, Grey Is Ground welcomes ambiguity; patiently waiting for beauty, empathy and comfort to be revealed.
In Slater’s beautiful, complicated world, optimism and realism cohabitate, uncertainty and resolve blur. Slater can make the everyday appear galactic, or the sublime handheld. And amid the complex rhythms and catchy choruses, Slater is trying, in her words, to “hold on to the question”, to see if doubt might be a doorway to love. “The unfamiliar rhythms feel like the ground in this music – earthy, complex, and mysterious,” says the singer, “and my voice walks across this ground – trying to understand what I’m walking on. And to me this ground – the starting place and the returning place – is ambiguous, or grey.”