Graze is extremely effective at creating a journey with its productions, and this recent live set is no exception. The debut of this live show happened at Mutek 2013 in Montreal, and received significant recognition at the festival and in reviews. XI (Christian Andersan) and Adam Marshall (head of New Kanada, a personal label favorite) know how to demand motion and imaginative thought. While still being immersive with a wide spectrum of emotion, their tracks as Graze can have this dirty sassiness with the rhythms, and I absolutely love their execution. I’ve listened to this mix at work; washing dishes and cleaning tabletops, as well as at home cleaning my room. These can feel like mundane tasks, but as their live set sound tracked my actions I was immediately taken to another place, a placed dreamed up and translated by this duo. I hope to see Graze live in the near future, their fluidity with performance is of very high quality. I’m happy that this live session is available for download via XLR8R. Fine job with the eq’ing and/or mastering of the mix, ultra crisp. So many mixes I hear are missing that final touch, and I think it can do a disservice to the collection of tracks.
I adored their self-titled debut EP. I wrote multiple blog features on the release, and played out several tracks such as “On Board” and “Ques”. After hearing that an album was fast approaching, I had no doubts that it would be major. I believe it will further show that Graze makes consistently strong statements about musical quality and graphic design. This new track “Skip/Crush” is a sonic triumph, pleasing on headphones and blasting out a club sound system. The video’s design demonstrates that Graze is just as strong with visuals and they are with beats. It astounds and inspires me that all the graphic design for Graze, including this new video and all the graphic productions for the New Kanada label are done by Adam Marshall. A one man machine, I see such talent in his able to create cohesion, making art pieces with lasting potential. This visual element of New Kanada deserves it’s own feature, but for now I want to give Adam credit for such mastery of the eye.
Today marks the eve of the ‘Edges’ release, Graze’s debut album. They’ve built it up very well, with all signs pointing towards a very strong presentation. I hope that it brings listeners together from many walks of life; from techno heads to dubsteppers, bass music fanatics to ambient chill people’s and everyone in between. The walls between genres are being broken down and mutated once again. Graze are a perfect example of two people coming from different ends of a landscape, and through mutual respect, creating distinct common ground.
You can now stream the entire album, with commentary from Graze via Self-Titled Mag.
– Jimi Jaxon
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