Artist Spotlight: GRAMN.

Shot by fatty35mm

The Pit was given the chance to sit down and have an open conversation with Hackney based 28-year-old singer/songwriter Aux from the band GRAMN. during an Interview about their new project KillaGRAMN. With their third EP featuring the collective’s signature concoction of charismatic lyricism and sonically adventurous soundscapes, GRAMN. continue to push boundaries in an expression of liberating creativity, melding groove-laden R&B, trap influenced beats and spliced-in samples in an EP that keeps authentic London life at the forefront.  

The fast-rising London collective is also made up of producers and multi-instrumentalists James Lowe and Johnny Tomlinson. James has a background in heavy metal rock and Johnny is classically trained pianist, and even plays the flute on some tracks of the EP. They are one of the most innovative and textured acts coming out of the city right now. A combination of tightly wound R&B with Aux’s gifted vocal and flamboyant persona quickly carving a unique path with the sole aim of making art.

Talk to me about your new EP KillaGRAMN?

This project took ages in comparison to the other two projects because we looked at each song very precisely I guess and I feel that in every song we wanted to make abundantly clear how we felt to a certain extent. Each song is completely different, P.P. is a song about my feelings for Priti Patel and her behaviour. The Burger King and ME is about a friend of mine who passed away and when he died, I grew this massive fear of death. Long Way Down is about my ex. Diamond is pretty self-explanatory, regardless of the abondance of obstacles that have been thrown at me I’ve just about scrapped through every time.

It's like little snapshots or photos of my life in like three minutes or a time where I have just thought about something, but just on record.

What’s your background?

I was born and raised in East London Hackney. I was always creative but art was never my focus I was just good at it but I never thought about being a musician or an artist. My mum is mixed race West African and European, and my dad is Caribbean. So yeah, I would say that my household was nor typically Caribbean or West African it was really a blend because both of my parents were born here giving me a proper blend of that Black British culture in the 90s as well where Hackney had a massive Caribbean community. It still does but it’s just not the same as before.

I always grew up what I deemed to be good music mainly R&B, Hip Hop and Jazz, all the good stuff! And I got uncles that are DJs. So when I left secondary school I didn’t know what I wanted to do so my sister was like why don’t you just go to this music college and I was like I don’t really know if I wanted to be a singer but she said try so I did.

I clocked that you used Spanish in one of your singles, Glow Up

You heard the Spanish? My nan use to have a house that she rented in spain I used to be that kid who use to come back to school in September late because I was spain. Glow Up 

So, when did you sort of have that self-realisation when you realised you could really sing?

I think I was in the studio with my friend, and she said to me you keep writing songs for other people but ultimately nobody else can sing them for you because they are quite difficult. It’s sort of like a everyone can’t sing like you sort of thing and I was like oh some of what I do people deem impressive, difficult or technical, making me realise oh I might be good at this and also that if nobody else can sing my songs I might have to sing them myself to have a successful music career.

What is GRAMN is it a collective or a band?

We actually get called a lot of different things but in all attempts and purposes we are a band. It’s just that you don’t see those guys, they behave like these mysterious ghost figures. When we play live its us three, we write everything together sitting in rooms for hours and hours just creating the whole project. That’s how we made all our previous projects until now, going up to Kent in one room just working.

What was the process that went into making the EP?

We all went to Johnny’s house, and we do what we always do. First night we get in we have dinner together and sit down to talk about what we want to do, then the next day we go studio. Literally it can start over a drum beat or an little idea that somebody had, listen to a couple references and then things start happening its really hard to explain someone would start bopping their head and Johnny would start playing sine mad stuff on the syth.

Some of the concepts came straight away with small lyrical ideas. Do It From The GramN was influenced by Kendrick Lamar because I was listening to him a lot at the time and I just like that flow. So I thought let me just step into that space and James was like that’s cool but everything around that little bit of beat that we had was how it became a song.

Other than Kendrick Lamar, what’s your other influences?

Oh gosh, I always end up leaving people out but yeah Missy Elliot, James Blake, Busta Rhythms, Destiny Child and also Beyonce. I do have a lot of what would Beyonce do moments, especially when I do backing vocals, if its not feeling juicy then I’d think if Beyonce was doing backing vocals on this what would she do, going through her repertoire in my head and being like give it a little swirl.

I also listen to a lot of Grime and Kano, every one of his projects because there’s something about Kano’s musicality crossed with the hardness of the things that he does and talks about that I really like especially his most recent project which was one I listened to a lot when making this project. 

You can really here how different all the songs sound compared to each other and the different genres that you listen to. How would you describe your sound?

I feel that music is the easiest way for me to be honest, everything sounds nicer in a song. So that’s literally what it is and the musical part of it is what’s happening in GRAMN. is three people’s brains working at the same time, so you have to be in sync . The only way to describe it is quite epileptic,  experimental and alternative. What we like to do is take a really chilled R&B easy to listen to track but the context of the song is quite wild

Is music therapy for you or do you create it with your audience in mind?

Once we release the songs, they don’t belong to us anymore, they aren’t mine they’re yours. It’s always art first. The job of an artist is to have a critical eye or a critical opinion on a subject meaning all art is to some extent relatable because we are all going through the human experience together. So I wouldn’t say it’s all therapeutic but I would say it all comes from us for sure because it’s very hard to separate yourself from your art. It’s not like being an accountant or a bartender where you can just shut your laptop off at the end of the day, art can happen at any time it’s part of your thought process its part of your emotional being, each song means something different to me but I wouldn’t say I’m that self-indulgent as an artist I also write songs about other people and from an observatory perspective.

Obviously you care about what other people think when it comes to other artists and musicians because you want to know what the people that you respective think. You make art from artists but you make art for normal people too. It’s all around you it’s the reason why you buy them creps from Nike but it’s actually that beat in the background playing that made you buy them

What inspired the visuals for Long Way Down?

The video was suppose to have a surface meaning and a deeper meaning giving you the option of if you wanted to read into it too much or not. If you looked into the symbolism and the guys with red on their faces and the fact that the whole thing basically looks like a set up. The idea is Long Way Down is about somebody who I knew wasn’t very savoury as a person but in certain situations you’ll be blind to whatever you want. So the guys represent red flags but not in the boring generic sense and I also wanted to explore the idea that when your willingly running towards these red flags your accountable. We end up making it out of the situation during the video to prove that we’re still here.

Lastly do you think that social media influences how we see things or even people now?

Social media sort of allows a bit of flexibility when it comes to language and what things actually mean vs what they mean when you say them in real life. It’s  very crazy because if you look at my Instagram you’ll see that I’m very careful about the things I say or do. My Instagram is for my music it’s the easiest way for me to reach people, it’s the easiest way for  people to reach me, same for Facebook and Twitter. 

But working as a musician looking at my Spotify streams, i’m looking at my iTunes streams those are the things that’s going to allow me continue to have this career permeantly and not work two jobs. I feel that it’s weird that a little square on your screen is going to bend you out of shape because it’s showing you this person who has all the things you want and don’t have.

Use social media to be social, use it share your news or to find out the where the next gig is, even that Kendrick Lamar’s new album is out and we’re all excited but don’t use it to dictate how your going to live your life or how you define success.