Call Gran Central a future beat producer. That might not be entirely accurate, but he wouldn’t mind. The majority of the music produced under this moniker is most definitely electronic-oriented instrumental hip hop, but Gran can really only wade in one circle for too long without opening the gates to other styles. “I don’t mind being associated with a genre because I’ll always be stretching it,” he reasons. “You can call it whatever you want. I just want to make music that moves a dancefloor but stays true to myself.”
You might picture a dude with nothing but a drum machine and a laptop. Actually, he’s also an accomplished saxophone player, and the instrument appears in many of the projects he’s involved in. He also intentionally makes a performance out of his live shows, which consist of a laptop and Akai controller, a synth, a rack of effects, sometimes the sax, and a drum kit played by Cru Jonez, his frequent collaborator.
“Say I recently bought someone’s album and then I go see them live,” Gran says. “I want to see performers breathe life into their music as opposed to just pushing play on stage. Like, ‘Oh, I know this song, but this is so much cooler!’”
Last year, he toured with Michna as part of his live band Raw Paw. Gran plays the sax and does effects alongside Jonez on the drums while Michna plays the trombone and does a light show. The band shares Gran’s performance ethic. “It’s important that you’re not just a guy with a white screen in your face,” he reiterates.
Gran, whose name comes from the appropriation of an attempt at insult from a high school bully, also tries his hand at sound design. He recently created the soundtrack to an art video that was exhibited at Scope Art Fest in March. The music incorporated surround sound with four separate tracks that spin around the listeners. He also remixed that ambiance into a more beat-driven, bassier track which he plays at clubs.
Hip hop producers frequently sample other music for their beats, and the act is the foundation of many circles within the scene. But Gran prefers to sample instrumentation played by himself or a collaborator. In fact, this is where he starts — by gathering as much live stuff as possible, then adding the electronic elements.
But when it comes to writing the electronic portion, it’s much more than picking up a keyboard and playing. He alters those sounds until they are entirely his own before using them. “I love the 808,” he says as an example, referring to a vintage style of drum machine. “But I also love fucking with it. It will be my sound and no one can recreate it.”
He’ll also alter instruments to attain a similar uniqueness. In one of his songs, he uses a broken, taped-up snare drum recorded from behind to achieve an effect of crunchiness. He even dives straight into musique concrete, using found objects as instruments. The track below, “Bike“, is the fullest extent of that. Made for a bicycle documentary, the track uses a bike as a percussion instrument.
But he also pays a lot of attention to the composition of his work. “I have a strong basis of musicality. It’s nice to hear music that fluctuates in key or has interesting changes in chords, for example.”
Last year, he lost most of his music when his hard drive crashed. So nearly all of Gran’s music these days was made within the last year. His most recent output is a series of gypsy-styled beats, available for free download on Soundcloud. Elcodeck, the funk group he’s a sax player for, also recently released a CD.
Gran Central — “Bike”
