The Perpetual Remix: Saya Gray Interviewed | Features

I wasn’t prepared for Saya Gray. Not the first time I heard her, and not the first time I met her. The Toronto-based, anti-algorithmic artist has a unique ability to create a collage of sounds that is intimate and restless, almost claustrophobically so. She mixes fractured grooves, mangled beats, and hall-of-mirrors funk into constantly shifting, quilted melodies; her use of bass-led instrumentation and fluid arrangements reflect a jazz-funk heritage, while rhythmic cut-ups challenge the listener to find solid ground. 

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This is reflective of Gray’s own multifaceted personality. “My life is a remix,” she tells me on a sunny afternoon in east London. “I’m a collage: one day I’ll be a little boy, tomorrow I’ll be an Asian tourist, and the next day I’ll be an old woman that never wants to see a human.” This volatility is at the core of her music. “I put 1000 personalities in one song,” she explains. “I piece everything together. I’ll make 400 songs and then use this section here, or sample this section here, and make one song.”

Her releases so far, from debut album ‘19 MASTERS’, which twisted acoustic folk into something strange and compelling, to the fuller, more electronic psychedelia of ‘QWERTY’, are rooted in this emotional complexity and unpredictability. “I’m on day 227 / And the devil flicks my brain with all of the feathers that you left when you flew,” Gray sings on her song ‘AA BOUQUET FOR YOUR 180 FACE’, bemoaning the high price of heartbreak over a skittering drum beat and a resinous bassline, perfectly illustrating her aphoristic approach to music-making.

Growing up in Toronto, Gray’s influences were far-reaching, which may have informed the way she now creates. “My dad was a jazz trumpet player, and was very much gigging in the scene when I was young,” she says. “I was really lucky because he’d be playing with Ella Fitzgerald or Aretha Franklin, and I got to see so many crazy acts by the time I was ten. But then my mum was a piano teacher and her classical teachings were strict. It was a very musically polar way to grow up.”

“I listen to music, but I never reference anything. That’s the main thing. It’s just in my body from listening to it, and I just make it in the moment.” Her willingness to follow her instincts and experiment with different sounds and styles has a replenishing effect; she’s known for removing songs from streaming services that no longer resonate with her: “I feel like impulsiveness with discernment is the most beautiful balance.”

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Her live shows capture this chaotic energy perfectly. “Seriously, that’s why my shows are so funny, because people expect this perfection, and I’m like ‘I have a really fucked up idea of what I actually am.’” This self-awareness and wantonness to embrace imperfection makes her performances an unpredictable, exhilarating experience. Gray opened her show at London’s ICA by name-dropping Eckhart Tolle, having the audience partake in an ice-breaker exercise, calling out all the “industry shits”, asking for song requests from the audience whilst refusing to take a single one. 

Gray’s rebellion against the music industry is audible in her work. “Fame has replaced art, and that’s really sad,” she winces. “Who I am and what my art is, is not defined by what awards I get or who I’m associated with.” Unlike many artists who merely talk about resisting industry norms, Saya’s music is an act of resistance: “I know the mastery that I’ve been working towards. As soon as you get distracted with the other bullshit, you start losing the mastery.” Avoiding headlines, controversy, and the trappings of the internet, Saya is actively eschewing fame, committed instead to “finding that grounding in authenticity where you don’t feel you constantly need external things to prove your worth.”

Demarcating lines between a career and a personal life for a normal superstar can be difficult. I probe Saya on whether she thinks this level of vulnerability is healthy. From a parasocial perspective she offers the flipside. “I’ve seen so many big artists get consumed by their identities. What that means is that everyone around you looks at you for what you do, not who you are. And that’s a really dangerous place to be in.”

She’s mindful of what external validation does to artists. But as the soft-skilled industry turns to scattershot sirens like Gray to invent benchmarks that prove itself worthy, she manages to stay focused on her own vision of success. “I know as soon as things get rolling, and the music becomes more popular, I become a genre. People will start to sound like me, and that’s when I won’t do it anymore. The point isn’t to idolise me,” she muses for a second, “what am I supposed to do, not put out music?” She shrugs, though I don’t believe her when she says, “I could do that.”

Because despite the mutability that characterises much of Saya Gray’s music, there is a marked sense of peace about her today. “I’ve calmed down a lot in my life and I think that’s changed a lot in the new music,” she shares. “There are fully-formed ideas for the first time, but I have a fully-formed life now as well. I finally have a home. I have cats that I take care of and a lease. The next album is a representation of that, finally.” 

Gray promises this evolution is not a rejection of her past but rather a momentary juncture for her sound and identity. The intricate rhythms and layered sounds might still be present, but there’ll also be a sense of space and clarity that allows the listener to breathe. “It’s my basic bitch era,” she deadpans. “I put my weirdness in there just for the people who like ‘QWERTY’, but I had to challenge myself. I needed to make a short and concise album, and I did it. I proved it to myself. Now I can go fucking weird again.”

Even now, after multiple encounters, I find myself continually unprepared for Gray’s forward momentum; her ever-evolving sound, appearance and mood. “I just want to keep putting out music and making art.”Through all the changes, her tenacity remains constant.

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