Gravious (real name: Ali Grav) is a dubstep producer based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Biography[]
Taken from his official website I started producing music in 2001 after being shown the basics of DIY production by my mate Rob. I played around with a lot of different styles, including electronica, ambient and drum and bass. However, I was increasingly drawn to the then fresh sounds of Dubstep, Dark Garage and Broken Beat after hearing the selections of DJs such as J Da Flex. Although I took inspiration from these sounds, I was also heavily influenced by my wider tastes in both electronic and instrumental music, in particular, Future Sound of London, Boards of Canada, Radiohead, LTJ Bukem, Aphex Twin, and a raft of more leftfield DnB artists.
I made my first few identifiably Dubstep pieces in late 2004 and early 2005. ‘Wormsign’, a track made towards the end of 2005, became my first release alongside ‘Monolith’ on the Scuba sub-label of HotFlush. This release hit the racks as a 12? in Autumn 2006, and was followed up by 3 further releases on Hotflush or it’s sub-labels.
Having DJ-ed regularly around Scotland after my first releases, 2007 saw my first ‘live’ laptop set of strictly Gravious material, when I played at the Triptych music festival in Edinburgh alongside Pinch and Distance. Since then I’ve taken the Gravious live show on the road all over the UK and Europe, as well as on a short tour of Australia. When I play live, I prefer to play in unusual venues and interesting events. Over the years this has led to me playing in the deep end of a Dutch swimming pool, a psychedelic home-made “treehouse” in the Australian bush and at the top of a Soviet era TV tower in Hungary! I have also played under the stars in Athens on an illicit rig powered off streetlights, deep in the forests of southern Scotland, and in the glass houses at Brussels botanic gardens.
The time since my early releases on HotFlush labels has seen a slow but steady run of record releases, not to mention a steady progression of musical style. The 2009 release of my Futurist EP on Highpoint Lowlife records was an early point of my move towards increased melodies and colour in my music, although still clearly harking back to the more minimal earlier recordings.
Since then, several releases and EPs have given me space to develop this range of styles, from detroit techno stylings on the Junction City EP, through more esoteric pieces on my Spatial Dimensions EP records, to throwbacks to my early days like the 12″ featuring my track Future Blues. More recently, the Rolling Thunder EP on Halo Cyan records in late 2013 saw some of these styles coming together, with a mix of garagey swing, harder vibes and soundscapes. This diversity is what keeps me interested in producing, and it’s something I aim to maintain in the future. [1]