I’m Ali a.k.a. Gravious, and I am an electronic music producer in Glasgow, Scotland.
I pronounce it GRAV (as in gravity)-EE-USS. How you pronounce it is up to you.
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 on 12″ vinyl 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. I particularly love 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.
Many years, and quite a few releases, later I’m still making music in 2021 – but family and life means it’s a slower pace! But watch this space as new bits are still dropping from time to time, and I put out freebies from the back catalogue when the mood strikes me.
Ali Grav