GRiZ

Artists similar to Griz: The Floozies, Exmag, Gramatik

 

 

  @MyNameisGRiZ

 

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GRiZ – Summer ’97

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GRiZ – Feelin’ High

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GRiZ – The Moment Seizes Us

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GRiZ combines jazzy instrumental grooves with vintage vocal samples and seductive saxophone drops to provide a soulful journey into the exploration of musical expression. GRiZ is an American electronic music artist also known as Grant Kwiecinski (born May 31st, 1990) from Detroit, Michigan. GRiZ had learned to play the Alto Saxophone and piano at a young age. At 14 years old, he fell in love with hip-hop instrumentals and electronic dance music.

From funky grooves to jazzy melodies, GRiZ’s inventive style to fuse his own saxophone instrumentals with his love for soulful electro tunes has helped his talent stand out from all the rest. GRiZ’s style creates bass infused hip-hop, electro soul, and future funk sounding productions often accompanied by the live performance and recording of his Alto Saxophone and the use of an array of vinyl samples.

 

The State News reported, “Former MSU student Grant Kwiecinski took control of his future when he decided to postpone his college education and focus on a music career. In his mind, Kwiecinski said, it was now or never.” Kwiecinski said to The State News,

“Things don’t just happen, we make our own destiny.” -GRiZ

GRiZ debuted his first full-length album late summer on Sept 4th ’12 titled “Mad Liberation” that has garnered him major buzz and exposure worldwide, racking up over 40,000+ downloads within it’s first 2 weeks of being released. Although music has become his career, GRiZ has provided listeners with a free download of his most recent album, “Mad Liberation.” While this decision could potentially jeopardize his profit, Kwiecinski said it’s a worthy sacrifice to be able to have his music shared. He said to The State News,

“It’s important for music to be heard and shared,” he said. “It’s spiritual, and I don’t want to put a price on that.” -GRiZ

With the summer being filled with some huge festival performances including some notable shows at Electric Forest, Coachella, Movement (Detroit Electronic Music Festival), and Summer Set. He also joined Gramatik for his Digital Freedom tour, as well as some spread-out small headline dates in the mix. Fall 2012 for GRiZ was pretty eventful, jumping on Big Gigantic and Bassnectar’s tours, then off playing a small run of his own intimate headline shows across the nation so keep an eye out for him in your area!

 

Gramatik

(Artists similar to Gramatik: RJD2, Sound Providers, Pete Rock)

  @Gramatik

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Gramatik – Itz Over

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Gramatik – DreamBIG

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Gramatik – Adriatic Summer Nights

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Kick back and relish in the solace of immaculately produced hip-hop beats and instrumentals made by Gramatik. His delightful musical style blends hip-hop roots with jazz, soul and blues influences. Gramatik’s ability to apply a hypnotic groove with layers of vocal samples, sounds, references, and metaphors has continued to fascinate those who have stumbled across his music. He is distinguished in his effort of using chordal patterning and tonal harmonies to create a clean and cohesive sound.

Denis Jasarevic, better known as Gramatik, is a hip-hop producer from Slovenia who is currently signed with the Pretty Lights Music record label. This Slovenian producer was heavily influenced by American music early in his childhood, absorbing anything from funk and jazz to soul and blues. When Gramatik was in the 2nd grade, he started taking piano lessons at his elementary school. He later received private piano lessons which opened his eyes to learn to play music like the Beatles and rhythm and blues in general. In the 4th grade, he formed a band with a few of his classmates and became the youngest band in the history of his elementary school while playing school events regularly.

As soon as Gramatik reached high school, the discovery of hip-hop music had taken over and he was compelled by the power of the rhythmically accented poetry. He studied the ways of an MC and started writing his own rhymes while his friends were amazed by his flow and delivery since there were no hip-hop artists in his home town of Piran, Slovenia. Throughout the years producing beats day by day he felt more compelled by the craft and magic of music production. It wasn’t long until he discovered a niche in sound and voice sampling which became his true love in the music making process, chopping up all those old funk, soul, blues and jazz tracks he used to listen to when he was younger.

Gramatik’s Beatz & Pieces Vol. 1 (album available for free download on Pretty Lights Music) is his first release on PML record label and builds on the mellow vibes created from his last release No Shortcuts and the Street Bangerz mix-tape series. Gramatik explains on the PLM website,

“The Beatz & Pieces series comes as a successor to the popular Street Bangerz series which was my first work as a producer. They are still raw, sample based beats, but with evolved arrangements and wrapped in a fine layer of live instrumentation. The reason I started adding live instruments is because I felt that classic hip-hop beats without vocals lose me after two minutes. I want to keep the listener through the whole track!” – Gramatik

The Glitch Mob

(Artists similar to The Glitch Mob: Deadmau5, The Xx, Daft Punk)

  @theglitchmob

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The Glitch Mob – A Dream Within a Dream

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The Glitch Mob – We Can Make The World Stop

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The Glitch Mob – Fortune Days

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If you have robot ears or just want to get a little glitched out, The Glitch Mob may have what you’ve been looking for. The Glitch Mob is notorious for their bass-driven electro rhythms mixed with addictive drum beats. This dynamic sound embraces glitch-hop roots that blends electronic, dubstep and rhythmic influences. For the past several years, The Glitch Mob has devoloped a solid fan base through showcasing their sound and technology during performance solos using laptops and MIDI controllers at various music festivals worldwide.


The Glitch Mob is comprised of a three-man electronic group including Ed Ma (edIT), Justin Boreta (Boreta) and Josh Mayer (Ooah). After the three DJs discovered that they were all loosely affiliated with each other when performing at the same venues, the trio began their musical partnership by DJing back-to-back in a tag team style while performing their sets in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The group formed in 2006 and eventually started touring from the West Coast to the East Coast, later gaining popularity around the globe. The group’s debut album titled ‘Drink The Sea’, debuted on the iTunes Electronic Chart at number five and peaked on the CMJ top 200 Chart for College Radio at #57. As a result of the successful album’s debut, the Electronic Musician magazine ran a cover story on The Glitch Mob. The group stated in a electronicbeats.net interview:

“We try to play electronic music with an energy like a rock band. So we just go crazy and have fun. The more fun the people have, the more fun we have.” – The Glitch Mob

Glitch sounds are often produced on computers using modern digital production software to splice together music samples from previously recorded works. These cuts are then integrated with the signature of glitch music in which the beats can be made up of glitches, clicks, skips and scratches. These glitch clips combined with digital synthesizers used by The Glitch Mob are usually very short, and are typically used in unison with traditional percussion. Skipping CDs, scratched vinyl records, circuit bending, and other sound distortions are prominently involved in the creation of rhythm and feeling of glitch.


The Glitch Mob has been able to incorporate technology into every step of their creative process successfully. The group’s upbeat energy has continued to shake up dance floors with a sound that transcends into the emotion of the listeners.

Below is a video released by The Glitch Mob who remixed Daft Punk’s ‘Derezzed’ Music Video, honoring the harmony of vision and sound.

Resources:

theglitchmob.com

The Glitch Mob interview

Pretty Lights

(Artists similar to Pretty Lights: Paper Diamond, Michael Menert, SuperVision)

  @PrettyLights

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Pretty Lights – Finally Moving

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Pretty Lights – Only Yesterday

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Pretty Lights – The Time Has Come

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Pretty Lights describes the genre of his music as ‘ElectroHiphopSoul’ and that term couldn’t be any more valid. The soulful essence of Pretty Light’s tunes consist of abstract hip-hop beats that fuse electro qualities with vintage vocal samples, potent hooks and bold synthesizer patterns. The output of Pretty Light’s music features digital sampling that crosses different genres together, forming a brilliant combination of electronic roots with funk, soul and hip-hop influences.


Derek Smith, better known as Pretty Lights, is an electronic music artist and producer from Colorado. Growing up, Smith was involved in a few different music groups ranging from punk to funk. While attending highschool in Colorado, Smith created and produced hip-hop music but always had an interest in electronic based music. He used music production software for a few years until he felt that his music was mastered enough to finally put a project together. Timeless music (music that has the ability to stand the test of time) such as Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin were all very influential in Smith’s process of creating his own style of music. Smith references the name ‘Pretty Lights’ from a 1966 New Years concert poster with Pink Floyd and The Who that read “Come and watch the pretty lights!” Derek Smith explained in a Spinner.com interview,

“Throughout your life there are moments that inspire you as an artist — and creative people sort of have this eye for the world where they’re always looking for things that are beautiful, cool or inspirational. It’s the little things throughout your day that can turn into a big inspiration creatively.” -Pretty Lights

Unlike most artists, Pretty Lights has ALL of his albums and EPs available for free downloads on his website with the option to donate. Smith has been remarkably productive in creating music for his growing fan base. He has released several albums and EPs across the span of a few years, including the full-length albums: ‘Taking Up Your Precious Time’ (2006), ‘Filling Up the City Skies’ (two fully stuffed CDs worth of material, 2008), ‘Passing by Behind Your Eyes’ (2009), and three EPs: ‘Making Up a Changing Mind’ (2010 EP), ‘Spilling Over Every Side’ (2010 EP), ‘Glowing In the Darkest Night’ (2010 EP).


The album, ‘Filling Up The City Skies’ was downloaded over 30,000 times from the Pretty Lights website in the first 3 months of release, proving that the Pretty Lights sound is not only getting around, it’s spreading like a virus. Smith recently released two albums on his newly formed record label, Pretty Lights Music. The record label offers free downloads for any of Pretty Lights’ albums plus Michal Menert, Paper Diamond and Break Science, all currently on Pretty Lights Music. Gramatik is the latest addition to the Pretty Lights Music record label with his first album, ‘Beatz & Pieces Vol. 1’ (2011), available for download as well.

Pretty Lights puts on a real show when he is performing at concerts and spends thousands of dollars on his LED light shows alone. Pretty Lights has been touring across the United States while taking over music festivals. As a result, he has picked up an exponentially growing fan base in which most of his shows are sold out weeks before the day of the concert.

Below is a new video (released 2 weeks ago) by Pretty Lights for his newest song ‘We Must Go On’.

Resources:

Pretty Lights Interview by Spinner.com

Pretty Lights Music