Robert Dallas Gray

See the full podcast episode post here

Tom Ray: Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Lorenzo’s Music Podcast. I’m Tom, and this is a show where I talk with musicians, people who make things for musicians, and mostly with a focus on the open source or federated realm or just independent musicians in general. People doing stuff. And. And, today I am speaking with a musician who, is in a different time zone than me. I don’t know why I’m explaining that. Usually that’s the case. But why don’t you tell the people who you are and what it is you do?

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah, well, I’m in Glasgow and it’s, 5 to 8pm at the moment. You can see it’s dark outside.

Tom Ray: Yeah, it’s nice and dark out there. That’s actually really good. Skyline?

Robert Dallas Gray: Well, we live up a hill, so you get a view right over the city at the back there. It’s very, very nice. My name’s Robert, Robert Dallas Gray. and I’m, a guitar player, and a recordist, I guess as well. I, do solo stuff and I’m in a number of different bands and duos with people. that’s maybe a good place to start.

Tom Ray: Yeah. And I. This is one of those things where I’m like, I discovered you on Mastodon or I found out about you on Mastodon, but I don’t remember the origin of it. It’s one of those things where I have a list of people that I’m going through to try and reach out for the podcast. And, your, your name was on there and it’s. I’ve been meaning to get a hold of you all summer, but it’s just one of those things where I book shows, but I release them bi weekly, so I don’t want to interview a bunch of people and then their episode comes out like months later, so I always cut it to the wire and I finally reached out to you and, basically what I like is. And I speak to a lot of musicians who are electronic musicians, but my background is in bands and playing with other people. Now you are solo and you play in a band, but you also play guitar. So I was excited to talk to. Not that electronic musicians aren’t musicians, but, you know, it’s, it’s. I don’t. I don’t need to make a distinction, but that was why I wanted to reach out to you. I liked that you were doing guitar stuff. Now explain the work that, explain your solo work. Explain what your solo musician stuff is like. How would you describe it?

Robert Dallas Gray: maybe it would help to kind of say where it came from, I guess. I started, playing guitar when I was about 15, but. And I was quite a late starter, a blooper in terms of kind of being in bands and whatnot. I didn’t join, ah, a proper band outside of school till I was 26, I think.

Tom Ray: Oh, really? M. Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah. That was a band called Life Without Buildings, which is probably the thing that most people would know me for. we split up in 2002, but we got back together, this year to do just a few shows, mostly for the 50th anniversary of Rough Trade Records. but, I kind of never really thought that I could be a solo guitar player at all. I felt like I was a guitar player in a band and I didn’t. I was not the kind of person that would sit down and play guitar on my own, even to amuse myself, never mind, for other people. and I kind of stopped after the band finished, which is nearly 25 years ago now.

Tom Ray: Oh, wow.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah, I did various different things and I was still playing music here and there probably up until about 2010. And then we had our first child in 2011. And I stopped playing music for about 10 years just because things became too busy and I didn’t want to. I only had one kind of conception of how you could do music, which was that you had to be in a band and you had to rehearse a lot. and the idea of having a kid and being very busy with a kid and a full time job and then also spending 6, 12 hours in a weekend in a room without any windows, arguing with people didn’t really appeal to me anymore. So, I kind of stopped playing music apart from just kind of fiddling about on the guitar, a little bit. But my friend Martin, Martin Henry, who also has been in bands and is a solo musician and who I collaborate with on a project called Win. he asked me to play on a record by his band DeRosa at the time, which are no longer, no longer going, but they existed at the time. And so I kind of started gently playing guitar a little bit again. And kind of before I knew it, I became really, taken, taken up with playing music again and taken up with guitars and amplifiers and the whole business of it. And Martin really kind of pushed me, to play and booked studio dates for the duo and whatnot. And that was kind of right before COVID Okay. And, as it kind of happened, I’d started buying Guitars again, buying amplifiers. And a lot of the time I just found myself noodling on the guitar and listening to the sound of it. and I had little things that I would play again and again. just to hear the sound of the guitar and the sound of an amplifier. And I was doing that one time with Martin, and Martin said, is that a solo piece? I said, no, I’m just. I’m just noodling. And he said, well, it sounds like a solo piece to me. So I kind of realized at that point maybe there was something that I could do, as a solo player that that would be interesting because I don’t. I’ve never had. I don’t shred. I’m not a fast or a complicated or a particularly technically adept player, really. at that time, I didn’t really have any significant musical knowledge. I had the kind of musical knowledge that guitar players have, which is a few chords and how they get put together, you know. But what I did have was a kind of, command over, timbre and pace and touch m that I just developed over a long time. and so I started to kind of feel like these little things that I was playing could actually potentially be, solo guitar pieces.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: And, kind of coincidentally, at the same time, I was starting to learn a bit about musical theory. And, I tried so many times, you know, since I was like 15, to get into music theory, and it never stuck. Yeah, I’m one of these people that I can’t learn things if I’m not really interested in them, you know? So, it needs to be something that I really want to do if it’s going to stick at all. And as it happened, I’d sort of started, listening to a lot of jazz and become really interested in jazz harmony and how that works. And, I started to read about it. And, I learned about these things called shell chords, which are, the sort of basic components of a chord. So maybe the first, the third and the seventh. and then, a drone string. And I realized that I’d been playing these all my life. I didn’t know what they were or what they were called. So suddenly that was a route into, learning about harmony for me. And all these little things that I started to learn fed into little pieces. and that kind of became the first record that I put out, which was a mini album called Reels, which I think was 2021. and that was, Reels, by the way, as, a reel Is a, A Scottish dance.

Tom Ray: Oh, okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: It’s also it’s ah, a. There’s a famous Scottish musician called Dick Go and a folk musician. And on his first record, his first self titled writer, he’s got a lot of reels on there. and it’s so, it’s almost. I quite like the idea of a reel being this kind of Scottish folk tradition, but also, you know, potentially sort of having connections to the idea of film or whatever that these, these pieces were little reels. and one of the pieces is actually called quartal reels. On the, on the record that was one of the first pieces I wrote. because it is literally just these little it’s in quartal harmony and it’s like little vignettes that are all put together. So it does feel like reels like you know, little connected pieces rather than one full piece. So that was where that came about really. And from there it’s just been a sort of development of confidence in terms of playing and recording and my kind of confidence behind the stuff that I was producing potentially being interesting to people because people started to tell me that they were interested in it. And that’s always kind of helpful if you’re not sure what you’re doing is actually musical and interesting.

Tom Ray: So if you got started again, and I love the fact that you were still buying the gear even though you gave up music, that’s such a musician thing to do.

Robert Dallas Gray: Well, I could have started buying the gear. Yeah. Before the kind of reintroduction to play music, I did start buying the gear. I do love gear.

Tom Ray: I know, that’s what I mean. We use the same instruments like 90% of the time, but everybody’s always buying another thing. And you never get rid of the old thing. Of course not, because you might use it again. But I just, I just love that mentality and I get it. But you can’t explain it to anybody else.

Robert Dallas Gray: It’s just so hard to explain. I mean, luckily Martin is much worse than me. I’ve only got a few.

Tom Ray: Oh, really?

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah. Martin’s got like 20 or something and he’s constantly selling. Yeah, yeah. What I have, my kind of attitude to gear is, it’s always been the same. I’ve never had enough money to buy like great vintage guitars or amps or anything like that. So I, I buy cheap ones and make m them good. which is. That’s kind of partly, I guess why I’m. I’m sort of on Mastodon and I, you know, I record myself and etc. Because I’m quite technically minded. So I like to set up on guitars and I, customize amplifiers and things like that and build effects as well. So, in terms of gear, it’s not, it’s not like buying a sort of vintage les Paul for $20,000 or whatever. It’s buying something for $300 and making it good, you know, so.

Tom Ray: Yeah, yeah, no, you always. There’s the one you want and then there’s the one that you meticulously spent the time finding that’s in your price bracket or at least something, you know, facsimile thereof.

Robert Dallas Gray: There’s something nice about making things your own, I think as well. You know, it’s like if I customize an amplifier or One of my favorite kind of pieces I’ve got is a German tape Echo from 1962 that I spent, about a year, bringing back to life. Ah, nobody else has got anything like that. nobody’s got something that sounds like that. Only I’ve got that. And that actually kind of you can talk about, if you want, the record Missals that that’s based around. So I like the idea of, not just having expensive, beautiful gear, but having gear that nobody else has but isn’t necessarily expensive, you know.

Tom Ray: Yeah, and I do want to talk about that, but first I want to get to, how this came about. So it was, you said it was, you started doing something and then Covid happened. Now how were you recording this album? You said the first one or the Reels album came out in 2021. So with that shutdown and all that going on, what was your process for recording and getting back into it?

Robert Dallas Gray: Well, that’s a, ah, sort of interesting aspect of it because initially, it was myself and Martin working as when and we booked studio time. So we did it. We did a studio day and got, I think, one track recorded. And then pretty much straight after that everything started to shut down. so we had to. We had kind of been sending each other voice, memo. Voice memo notes and things like that. and we hadn’t really invested in any serious recording gear because we thought we would be going into a studio to record. but as Covid came around, that all completely changed, obviously. and so we did invest in, recording gear a little bit. Again, cheap stuff that we altered and made good.

Tom Ray: Like what. What kind of stuff do you get? I’m curious, what were you recording on?

Robert Dallas Gray: Well, a decision that we made kind of early on was what daw we would use. and that was based on price because we both had to have it so that we could exchange sessions. And so we went for Reaper, which is sort of very reasonably priced and really capable workstation. Martin was building his own amplifiers at that point and had started building effects and modifying microphones. So I mean like up here this microphone which you can’t hear me on at the moment, this is modified rode microphone. I think I got. I got it non working from ebay for like 40 pounds which is like about $50, 50 or $60.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: And changed the capsule in it and some capacitors and it’s you know, sort of functionally about as good as an Neumann now.

Tom Ray: Nice.

Robert Dallas Gray: So there’s things like that and then just cheap audio interfaces. Because we’re not recording drums, we don’t actually need a lot of inputs. so you can just spend a lot of time making up an amp. with again Just a selection of sort of comparatively cheap microphones. We use the line audio stuff I use which is really really good. That’s a Swedish maker who buys in sort of bulk components from China, selects the best ones and then builds his own microphones from them. And his small m diaphragm condensers are actually really well regarded. They’re sort of used by classical orchestras and things to record their stuff. Really has both his omnis and his small diaphragm condensers and they’re great. So I’ve used them a lot.

Tom Ray: How did you find that?

Robert Dallas Gray: asking around.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: And kind of searching on the web and whatnot. Just you know, to see what people are saying about stuff. I mean luckily I’ve been recording and playing music for you know, 20, 26, 27 years.

Tom Ray: Yeah.

Robert Dallas Gray: so I know a lot of people And I know what people are using and what they’re doing. So I do too.

Tom Ray: But I don’t nobody that makes microphones.

Robert Dallas Gray: Right. Yeah, I mean there’s. There’s a lot of different companies doing these kind of boutique, boutique effects, boutique microphones, amps and sort of small numbers. And some of them are really cheap. particularly know that the components are coming from China or where until recently for. For sort of very little cost. It’s the same with valve ampl. Like when I started to get back into playing. I’ve got a lovely old Fender but my brother in law had it and it was busted up. And So I was Looking for a nice valve amp. And I got a little VHT valve amp which is point to point wired, kind of equivalent to like an offender champ or something. And I think I got it for like £150 off of eBay. And again I was able to modify it into something really nice and really, really specific. so yeah, there’s a lot of stuff. A lot. The way that Martin does stuff is he’ll buy what he calls a donor amp. So you buy a cheap amp, like made in China, and then you customize it inside and put good components in it. And at the end of it you’ve got something that’s worth a lot more than you paid for any individual, Any individual part of it. And obviously there’s some labor involved in that, but if you’re prepared to do that, you can save yourself a lot of money and get something really good.

Tom Ray: Yeah, I love that. Okay, sorry, I don’t mean to bug you about gear. It’s just it was like, okay, you’re building, customizing all this stuff and I’m like, I gotta know about that. So. Okay, now leading up to. Okay, so you’re recording at home. What was the process for recording? And you said you needed, you both needed a similar daw that you could then switch off on. So what was your method in recording? And how were you switching this back and forth? How were you sharing these these daw files?

Robert Dallas Gray: Well, this goes back to the first when recording. So we had two EPs and then an album, in 2022 I think. And the COVID thing changed everything, as I say. So we’d been sending these voice memos back and forth to each other and then trying to kind of recreate those, recording them properly, you know, with like making up in a sort of decent room and taking care of it or, you know, recording at 2496 and ETC. ETC. And what we kind of found was that we couldn’t really replicate the feeling of the voice memos. no, because quite often, you know, we both have kids and both of families. so when we were recording these things, there was other stuff going on around, that bled into them and that a lot of that gave them the atmosphere that they started to miss when we stripped all that away and recorded them properly. So we started to actually explicitly use the voice memos and the record. so if you listen to the first couple of Gwen eps on the first record, Dawn Firth, there’s a lot of. They’re very domestic There’s a lot of family noise in them.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: Kids and dogs and cats and etc going. And I think that sort of made that record interesting in a way. it was more than just a selection of songs. It was also a sort of audio environment as well, which is something we’ve kind of tried to carry on, one way or another.

Tom Ray: That’s interesting because I did get kind of I’m forgetting which songs but I know what you’re talking about. I listened to it and it does have kind of a, I want to say field recording esque sort of aspect to it. And that’s what you’re saying that’s from. Is it’s from actual environmental. It’s in the background of what you’re using.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah. So there’s, there’s that. There are actual field recordings on the records as well. Yes. The, the first two kind of full length records that I did. The Rain Room is actually titled after a Field recording.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: Which I’m not sure if you heard, but it’s just a few minutes of very heavy rain. There was. We were on holiday on the Isle of Mull, which is sort of off the west coast of Scotland. It’s quite remote. The place that we were in and the house that we were staying in was like a prefab, excuse me, prefabricated house. So I m. Don’t know if you know about these things that like during the war there were a lot of prefabricated. They would just roll up a full house on a truck.

Tom Ray: Yep.

Robert Dallas Gray: And drop. Drop it there. And that was your house? Yep.

Tom Ray: Yeah, we got some of those here as well. Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.

Robert Dallas Gray: And it had a kind of back room with a plastic corrugate roof. And I think the first or second night we were there, there was just a very, very heavy rainstorm. And the noise that it made hitting this roof was really beautiful. the dog loved it. The dog went in that room to sleep and wouldn’t come out. So I recorded that. and sometimes when you’ve got something like that, you don’t really want to do anything more with it. You just want to let it be itself. So that titled the album. The album was called the Rain Room. and similarly on the second record there’s a recording of a, ah, storm, which I think was in early 2023. Storm Iwan, which is the worst storm that I think I’ve experienced in Scotland. it was winds up to sort of nearly 100 miles per hour. and so there’s a kind of minute and a half recording of that, on the Vallum, which is my second full length record.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: So yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s field recording, but there’s also all other recordings. I try and build space, space into them, so they’re not dry. There are always room mics. and if a car goes by or a neighbor starts mowing their lawn or whatever, I try not to stop, try and continue. Because a lot of the time these mistakes and accidents are what make things feel present, I think.

Tom Ray: Okay. And you had mentioned before too that Martin said, when you were playing something on the guitar, he asked if that was one of your, one of your solo works. And so is that the process that started how this all goes about? Do you start with a guitar line and then build around it or do sometimes the idea, like what is the process for that song? An example, as an example, like how did you go about actually finishing that song, fleshing that out on a recording and then releasing it?

Robert Dallas Gray: I’m not sure which one you’re talking about.

Tom Ray: you had mentioned when you were, had taken a break and you were buying gear and you said you were just playing something on guitar that you were, had done. And then Martin said, is that from your solo work?

Robert Dallas Gray: So that actually became, a solo duo improvised piece on, on the first twin album. That’s a piece called Morning.

Tom Ray: Okay, so that’s on the Win album.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah.

Tom Ray: Okay. Okay. I misunderstood that.

Robert Dallas Gray: Okay, so yeah, he asked me if it was a solo piece and I said no, I don’t think so. And he said, well, should we do it as a duo piece? So we did. but that, that was, that kind of got me thinking about how to play solo pieces. and yeah, so they do come about as, as just noodles really. or sometimes as most music does,

Tom Ray: to tell you the truth.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah, yeah. Jamming is the same thing, isn’t it? So you’re sort of jamming with yourself in a way. You know, it’s quite nice to be, to be playing distractedly, I think. you know, to be, to be. To have the kids around and they’re watching tv And you know, somebody’s making dinner and people are shouting and the dog’s barking or whatever. and your brain can be elsewhere and things kind of come to you and you listen, you listen to yourself rather than trying to practice or whatever, you know. so that’s quite a Good state to be in I think. And then so quite often I’ll. I’ll just take voice memo notes of those things if they’re interesting and go back to them. And quite often two or three of them will, will feel like they go together. So I think that’s how almost everybody writes music. You know, it’s just little pieces that come to you and you.

Tom Ray: Yeah.

Robert Dallas Gray: Oh, that’s a verse and that’s a chorus. You know, I don’t have verses and choruses but I have parts, you know, that feel like they fit.

Tom Ray: Yeah. And now just because it had come up and I confused it with one of your solo works. Let’s talk about the two different groups that you’re currently in. So one is your solo project and the other is Whin, which is whin Now.

Robert Dallas Gray: when is me and is me and Martin Henry. we are actually about to release another full length record. Oh. What we do is quite. We’ve got a kind of very strange working method. We kind of decided early on that we were just going to do whatever we wanted at any given time. and we kind of thought it would mostly be improv stuff. and again because of COVID because we couldn’t really be together improvising together. the first kind of full length record that we did changed into really being much more song based record. Martin’s a really good songwriter. and quite often he’s able to return little fragments of things that I bring in into kind of very fully fledged songs. so sometimes we work like that where you know, I’ve got a little piece and I’ll kind of record something that feels coherent as verses and choruses and whatnot. And Martin will write lyrics to it and sing. and then we build that out quite often with collaborators as well. I think we’ve got six different collaborators in the recent record. and then sometimes it is just improvised pieces and sometimes we do very long improvisations. Like the kind of second full length record that we did is called August a Dream. And that was derived from a kind of four hour full day of improvising together. edited down to the 45 minutes or whatever the length of the record is. so it really varies a lot. And then we did a kind of A couple of years ago we did a thing called Weeds, which is a sort of 21 minute track again with lots of collaborators and with a video and a booklet and a piece of writing associated with it. So we try and make it really expansive, and to involve a lot of people. and again we’re lucky. We know a lot of musicians, we know a lot of people that can do stuff. So if we kind of feel like something needs a violin, we can go and find somebody who’ll play a really nice violin part for us. which, we have two tracks on the new record that have violin by Jell o’. Sullivan. So, that’s worked out really well. Yeah, the new thing’s coming out. it’s called Summer Visitor. it’s a kind of very song based record, quite trad in places. and that’s coming out, on November 6th. Pre released in October 2nd.

Tom Ray: Which is very progressive because you’ve also released something this year. You do have.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah, I’ve got three records coming out before the end of the year actually. I’ve got one record.

Tom Ray: You went from 10 years off to that.

Robert Dallas Gray: It just happens sometimes, you know, Sometimes you just find yourself dropped into this kind of period of busyness. yeah, because obviously my band’s got back together and we’re playing some quite big gigs and we haven’t played together in 25 years so we’ve had to rehearse for that. and then, I kind of chanced into a collaboration with an artist called Joseph Quimby, who’s in a project called Rins. and he’s kind of a drone noise musician, I guess. Okay. and we’re just mutually appreciative of each other’s work. And I kind of suggested we collaborate at one point. And I had some kind of very abstract things, sitting around, that I recorded all in one day, after Eliane Radig had died and I was kind of thinking about her a lot. so I played these pieces and they felt kind of appropriate, to send to Joe. So I sent them off and he sent stuff back really quickly and then sent me three more pieces and we had a record. okay. So that’s also coming out next month I think on the Shadow World label. And that’s much louder and more metal than the kind of stuff that I do usually.

Tom Ray: Oh really?

Robert Dallas Gray: yeah, I mean it’s not, it’s not really metal because there’s no rhythm. But what Joe does is very load. I saw it live and it’s

Tom Ray: one of these metal and spirit clothes

Robert Dallas Gray: are actually moving, you know? metal and spirit. Yeah, yeah. It’s coming out on a kind of punk metal label, so.

Tom Ray: Nice. All right.

Robert Dallas Gray: And then I’ve got. I’ve got. I’m also in a group called Even Sisters with my friend Isabelle, which has kind of an electronic.

Tom Ray: Oh, I didn’t know about that one. Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: we’ve only had one release so far because we, We tend. It’s fully improvised. and, we tend to just do stuff live. So the recording that’s coming out is all live recordings. but that, should be before the end of the year as well.

Tom Ray: Yeah, you. But you do perform live too, so a lot of these, you’ve said, are improvised. Now, do you just also kind of improvise them on stage? Do you only have certain songs that you do when you’re playing live? Like, how do you go about playing publicly?

Robert Dallas Gray: Well, they vary. I mean, some of them are more structured than others. Some of them, you know, actually do actually kind of have verses and choruses and a. Structured that I played kind of quite precisely from beginning to end. but most of them do have structure. But it’s. But it’s quite flexible, so I sort of know what I’m going to be doing. you know, there are little, I guess, almost riffs or figures that I play, and ways that I move from one section to another. and that, You know, if you took all the live versions and overlaid them, they wouldn’t match exactly. You know, there’d be different lengths and things would happen at different times, but you would know that they were all the same piece, really. Almost kind of like classical pieces or whatever. You know, they can be played very Roboto. They can speed up and slow down. Bits can move around a little bit. But they are familiar as themselves, I think. and reactive, you know, to the situation and to the audience as well.

Tom Ray: But it would go back to kind of. When you were talking about jazz. I guess it would just be charted out in the sense that here is sort of section A, here’s section B. And then it’s just kind of wait for me. Wait for the changes or feel where it goes, and then do a nod. Now it’s your turn. But everybody has the same structure, knowing where it’s going to go next. For the most part.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah. when I play with Martin, that’s. That’s definitely the case. You know, it will sort of alternate with one of us leaving or following. the stuff that I do with Isabella, with even Sisters, is, We tend to kind of say, what are we doing tonight? And Isabelle will say, I’m gonna play a bit of guitar. And I might Start with vocals and that’s it. Then it’s just, okay, go and do 25 minutes. And we don’t really know. Don’t really know what’s gonna happen. Quite a lot of things that are very unexpected have happened, even sister shows.

Tom Ray: But, yeah, and I imagine that too. And I know there are some clips of, Well, actually, I don’t even think they were clips. I think I saw photos that you had shown of setting up. So I don’t know really what the live show was like, or at least I wasn’t able to find them. but I know I’ve seen on, like, Instagram and stuff there photos of, like, here we are getting ready, those sort of things. But, yeah, I was curious how the actual stage show goes and with the musicians, the multiple musicians that you played with, the different projects that you’re on. Are these all people you knew? did you meet these people along the way? You had even mentioned, like, if you want to have violin, you’ll find someone to play violin. I recently just tried to find somebody who plays accordion for something I was able to do, and that was a nightmare. And I still haven’t found the person, like, how are you finding these musicians? Especially, like. I don’t know. I just feel like as we continue to work, the musicians that I know in my groups, they get smaller and smaller. People just stop playing music. How are you finding all these people to work with? I’m a little jealous.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m in Glasgow, and Glasgow is a very musical culture and a really fertile scene. and I’ve been here a long time, so I know a lot of people, and people here tend to have a really DIY attitude. People don’t really stop playing music forever. You know, I stopped for quite a long time, but I wasn’t ever at, a point where I wasn’t involved in music. You know, even. Even when I wasn’t playing, I was going to shows and I was. I was. My friends were musicians and I was. Occasionally I would play in their records, you know, just ad hoc, even if I didn’t have a. Kind of a continuing practice. And that’s the same with a lot of people. You know, it’s not, You don’t have to be a musician or not be a musician. It’s kind of a part of life, that fits around everything else that you do in a way. but there’s. It’s not just Glasgow. There are people like Dylan Baldy from Cloud Nothings plays in the New Quinn record as well. so the kind of beauty of being online on Mastodon or wherever is that you do meet people, and quite often strike up relationships with them. Like Joe that, I’m doing the kind of loud record with. I kind of came about. Came to sort of no online. and we haven’t actually properly met in the flesh. I’ve been to his show and he went past me, but I was too shy to say hello. So we’re both very shy, so we didn’t say hello to each other, when we had a chance. But you, know, I’ve been on calls like this, with them, so we have kind of spoken face to face in that way. But, And, yeah, Isabelle from Even Sisters I met online as well, back in the sort of the old days of Twitter. She, lives in Glasgow. So we see each other a lot, in the flesh. But, yeah, I mean, this is the great thing about online is that, it’s very easy to strike up conversations with people and quite often those are lasting and they develop into friendships and collaborations.

Tom Ray: the great thing and the bad thing about the people I’ve met on Mastodon is that a majority of the people that I meet are in Europe. So I have no chance of. I have collaborated, I’ve done some remixes with people over there, but it’s like, yeah, I’m never gonna. I’m never gonna get there. I’m never gonna meet the people. And I find that sad. But also it’s kind of cool to know a lot of people in Europe.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s a. It’s a global thing now. it’s even with my kids. My kids. My eldest has. Her best friend, lives in Germany, and they’re kind of constantly chatting on the. On the phone all the time. So they’re, Yeah, global presence is quite normal these days, I think.

Tom Ray: Yeah. So it’s frustrating and really cool at the same time. Now, you had mentioned before as well, with, the music that you released and you had talked about videos. Now, I did really want to ask you about that because you will have pieces and a lot of them will be, you know, like around seven minutes long, five minutes long, things like that. And you will have accompanying videos with those. Now, who makes those?

Robert Dallas Gray: Who.

Tom Ray: Who is making. Because it. It is, it’s artistic on top of the music, which is already expressive and artistic in a motive. So who is making these videos and how do those come about?

Robert Dallas Gray: sometimes, myself or Martin will make Videos. When I did for my last solo, full length solo record, I made a few of the videos. I studied photography and I went to art school, as did Martin.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: So we have a kind of visual arts background. but we also have a friend, a guy called Chris Boyle, who is a, kind of professional video artist. and the ones that actually look good, he did, he’s really great. and he has a kind of great sense of what works visually with the music. I think he did. Let me think he did, did both of the videos for Missals, my last record. and I think, yeah, he did the video for the single off of, the previous record as well for me. And he’s done quite a few things for when as well.

Tom Ray: Okay. And speaking of Missals, and I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right, but also it is not spelled like Missals, like M I, S S L, E. It’s spelled M I, S S A L, S. Now help explain or help me with my ignorance. What is that?

Robert Dallas Gray: a missal is, It’s Ah. Like a religious term. It’s in Latin the word for mass is missa.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: So a missal is usually a kind of, sermon that’s given during a mass.

Tom Ray: Okay. All right.

Robert Dallas Gray: But it can also. It can also be not a spoken sermon, but given on paper, or as a sort of guide to the sermon as well. So it’s something that you would. That you would receive a mass.

Tom Ray: Okay. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t like how we Americans spell color and how Canadians spell color. Like maybe it’s just a different spelling. There’s a U instead of, you know, and here’s. There’s an A instead of an E. okay. And now that. That album, do you have a follow up planned on that one as well? I don’t know. I can’t remember if you mentioned that. I know you mentioned there’s a bunch of stuff you have coming out, but do you have a follow up solo album?

Robert Dallas Gray: No, I don’t have any solo stuff in the works at the moment. And that one came out in late 2025.

Tom Ray: Yeah, it came out like. Well, you. Yeah, but you also. You say it just came out in 2025, but you have something in 2026 for Wynn and you already have another one in the works.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah.

Tom Ray: So I was curious, like how. How prolific really are you?

Robert Dallas Gray: Well, I, had. Yeah. After Missals again came about really quickly and yeah, was kind of quite out of the normal run of what I do. And again, I just had all these little bits, that didn’t feel like they fit with the rest of my work in a way because they’re quite, They’re all. They’re not. I don’t want to say they’re pastiche, but they. They paint with colour straight from the tube, shall we say. You know, in my kind of normal solo work, I would like to think that’s kind of quite distinctively me. Yeah, there are obvious sort of influences on it. but the stuff on Missals is allowing myself to be. To sort of take on the mantle of Like Robert Smith of the Cure or the D Ray Column or Simple Minds, to let. Let those influences in and be quite obvious in a way. and to just let that out because, you know, I think all musicians kind of have, We all have influences. And Sometimes I think you play something and you think, I can’t do that. That’s too obvious, you know. But sometimes obvious is really nice as well, you know. So I wanted to do something that was, Not really paying tribute, but sort of trying to inhabit those influences a little bit and just use them really directly. Like not. Not really worry too much if something was very, very obviously like the Juriti column. but to let that be a color that you could. You could sort of paint with rather than. Rather than try and suppress the obviousness of the influence. So that was kind of one hook of it and the other hook was that all of the tracks used. my tape echo machine, which is a very sort of distinctive piece of gear that’s not really, It does its own thing, you know, it’s not really reliable. It’s not like a space echo or something where you always know what it’s going to do. whenever you turn it on, you can never be quite sure what’s going to happen with it. And it makes its own kind of atmosphere, and its own sound. So I don’t. I think that’s probably kind of a one off. Although aspects of it will probably feed into more of what I do. maybe in a kind of less obvious way. So it was kind of like I wanted to push a door open a little bit. Just to see. Just to see what was there. and some stuff might come through that door with me and some might just be left behind.

Tom Ray: Okay. And now also with the creating during, the shutdown and everything, and you had been Set up and recording at home. I didn’t ask. Did you ever end up going back into the studio or do you still now just self produce? Or is it a little bit of both these days?

Robert Dallas Gray: We, so far since, since then we’ve just self recorded and and self engineered as well. I mean I’m also, I’m kind of a control freak and I’m very fussy about, about how things sound and I like to learn.

Tom Ray: Not like a musician at all.

Robert Dallas Gray: And I’m also, I’m just very slow. I’m. I’m really slow and I don’t particularly like the pressure of being in a studio where you’ve got a deadline and it’s costing you money every minute that you’re in there.

Tom Ray: Exactly, yeah.

Robert Dallas Gray: so I like to be able to take my time over stuff and get it exactly the way that I want it, and not be working to anybody else’s deadlines.

Tom Ray: And I find it hard to. Or at least I would find it hard. We’ve been self producing since 2018 and I would find it hard to go back to not just being able to go into the daw and move things around the way I want like going. You know, what, what if we put this part over here instead, you know, and it’s. I love ship. It’s like a game of Tetris to me. And I just love only musical Tetris. And I don’t, I don’t know if I’d ever be able to accomplish that. If I went back into a studio, I’d go here. Could you get out of my way for a minute so I can do it?

Robert Dallas Gray: No, I mean, I think there is something really nice about working, in a very sort of direct way. And I usually try to start that way. Which is another reason we chose Reaper. Because we really wanted just a daw that kind of worked like a tape machine that was just like press record and what you get is what you get. Of course we do go in and edit and automate. But it tends to be that we, we and I, in my own solo work as well, will start with what feels like a good performance, performance first and then possibly edit and move stuff around on it. So I do, my day job is software engineering. So I really. That’s one of the. Like you were asking. It’s quite nice to speak to a guitar player, rather an electronic musician. Like I don’t really want to spend very much time in front of the screen. when I’m making music. I want to be playing the guitar as much as possible and I want to be. I want to be working in quite a musical way. And I kind of find that the sort of tapeish approach is good for that. you’re thinking much more about performance and much more about sound and playing than you are about structure and editing. But, you know, everybody’s different and I think, you know, most people, many people working both ways and the kind of way of, of very deliberately building things up, these days is a way that’s been enabled by, you know, having computer technology available in everybody’s house now. So.

Tom Ray: Right.

Robert Dallas Gray: It’s made some fantastic records. So I don’t want to play down either of those ways of working. It’s just, it’s just, you know, part of the reason that I make music is to get away from work and computers.

Tom Ray: I get that.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah.

Tom Ray: And I know a lot of people who are that way too. And for some reason I’m just not that way. I just love tinkering and I’m okay with just like, well, I’ll continue to take what I know from the screen and keep doing it. But I know other people who are just like, you know, I don’t want to. I sit in front of that all day. I want to just look at my instrument and play.

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah. I mean, I’m really glad that some people have that attitude because a lot of the music that I really, really like is made by people who do it entirely in front of screen and very meticulously, you know.

Tom Ray: Yeah, yeah. And so now I know you mentioned the albums that you have coming out this year, but I just want to double check before we, before we finish up here today. Is there anything else that you have coming up in the future or anything you’d like to tell people about projects that you’re going to be doing, that you’d like to mention before we leave today.

Robert Dallas Gray: I mean maybe I should just kind of go over what’s happening this year. So I’ve got the Huynh record Summer Visitor coming out on M. November 6th. the record with Joe Quimby, which the project name is Scala Grigg and the record is self titled. I’ll spell that for you in the notes if you like. that’s coming out on October 2nd on Shadow World Records. the Even Sisters record that’s coming out as a two tape box set, ah, as well as on digital that should be out by the end of the year. It’s not titled as yet, but that’s. I think. What was the last about two hours of live shows on that? I’m playing with my band, Life Without Buildings in November. two shows in Glasgow and two shows in London. and that’s as far as I’ve planned this year. So, yeah, that’s everything.

Tom Ray: Okay. And you have actual cassette tapes you’re saying you’re putting out?

Robert Dallas Gray: Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.

Tom Ray: Okay.

Robert Dallas Gray: I won’t show you them, but, yeah, I, mean, tape culture’s got quite big over here. I don’t know. I think there’s probably similar stuff in the States as well. Tape labels and whatnot.

Tom Ray: It. It tries to. Vinyl, of course, is still the big comeback, but, cassette players and CDs, they’re always like, one or the other, you know, like one. One minute it’s like, oh, CDs are back, and then the next minute, oh, cassettes are back. And it’s like nobody can play either of them without buying a special way.

Robert Dallas Gray: Definitely back in a big way. Like, we always make our money back on CDs and more. yeah, I did. I did cassettes for my last record, and they sold pretty well. I made my money back. not as well as CDs, but they were nice to do. and for particular kinds of music, I think some people really like them.

Tom Ray: Yeah, it’s just that. Yeah, it’s. It’s easier to find CD players in cars than it is to find cassette players in cars.

Robert Dallas Gray: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Ray: anyway, but I want to thank you so much for talking with me today. This has been great.

Robert Dallas Gray: Thank you.

Robert Dallas Gray

Listen on: