Music — Studio Gray

Stefanie Grawe aka Gray is a Cologne-based artist, designer and musician with a passion for graphic design, music production and audiovisual media.

Gray –Dialogue Systems (Frieder Vogel Remix)

Remix
October 7, 2022

For GRAY‘s title track »Dialogue Systems« of her 2022 released EP, a remix collaboration between both Cologne based producers GRAY and Frieder Vogel came to light. He took GRAYs atmospheric soundscapes and twisted the halftime beat into an uptempo broken beat with flickering rhythms, enlightening ambient textures and organic dub effects.

Gray –Dialogue Systems

Debut EP
February 18, 2022

»My music creates a mood that translates the acoustic into individual images,« says Stefanie Grawe aka Gray about her first EP »Dialogue Systems«. As a designer and electronic music producer she works at the interface of design, music and technology. With her audiovisual approach, she expands the boundaries of what can be experienced acoustically. Gray produces melancholy electronica and uses sombre melodic pads and broken drum rhythms to create atmospheric soundscapes that trigger or engage a sensory experience beyond pure music. Both the textured building blocks of her sound collages and the visual extensions of her work play a major role. Gray emphasises this organic approach by focusing on the composition – on her symbiosis of design, music and technology.

»I want to keep my album very open and give listeners a free space to connect to their own experience. With the title of my EP Dialogue Systems, for example, I refer to dialogue systems in our society. But what exactly is meant by that is up to each person to interpret for themselves«. This also applies to the songs on the album, which do not prescribe a specific theme, but are mainly meant to trigger emotions:

»Through my harmonies, on the one hand, I encourage people to get emotionally involved in the music, to engage with it,« says GRAY, adding, »But through harder beats, it also allows for confrontation and energy. I like to work with repetitive patterns that are also broken up. So my songs are always in motion. This is also reflected in my music videos.«

Gray –Fractal (Jlin Remix)

Remix
February 18, 2022

For GRAY‘s first single »Fractal«, a remix collaboration arose with the unique electronic music producer Jerrilynn Patton, better known as Jlin.

»I truly enjoyed doing this remix for starters. Stefanie‘s original piece gave me a lot of room to work with in terms of my approach. Like everything I work on, I never know how a piece will come out until it‘s done. In this case, I chose to focus solely on a portion of vocal stems, as they caught my attention the most. Thank you Stefanie, for allowing me to remix for you, and I hope all the listeners enjoy.« Jlin

Gray – Fractal

Debut Single
December 10, 2021

Sotaque Carregado Outernational

Music Production for a christmas album compilation.
December 25, 2020

Gray participated in the Christmas album production „Sotaque Carregado Outernational“ which was initiated by Rio de Janeiro’s DJ and Producer DJ MAM and produced by 30 artists from 12 cultures.

Gray produced the track “Pororoca Transatlantica (Let’s be glad and full of cheer)” together with DJ MAM and Salvador Araguaya. In times of Covid, the album premiere was released via live stream on Friday, December 25, 2020.

Design Pentagon Group,
Gray – 540°

Music Production for an audiovisual installation and limited vinyl edition release.
March 2020

At the beginning of the 1980s, a young generation of German designers renounced the principle of ‘good form’, which, until then, had been a defining characteristic of German design. One of the protagonists was the Cologne-based collective, the Pentagon Group, founded in 1985 by Gerd Arens, Wolfgang Laubersheimer, Reinhard Müller, Ralph Sommer and Meyer Voggenreiter. Pentagon worked with steel and Perspex, combining these materials with stone, rubber or leather, but also using them for everyday objects, lending their design a postmodern kick.

From 13 January to 26 April 2020 the Cologne Museum of Applied Arts showed the first monographic museum exhibition of the Cologne-based Pentagon Group. Their works were presented in a large installation staged in the museum’s central exhibition hall. The pieces of furniture became performers, set against the backdrop of a video collage that reflects the 1980s and placed the work into a cultural and historical context.

For this video installation Gray was asked to produce one of four songs called 540° alongside the producers Thomas Fehlmann, Justus Köhncke and The Bionaut (Jörg Burger). In collaboration with the museum and Kompakt Records all tracks are also available on a limited vinyl release. More information here. Listen to all songs on Soundcloud.

Gray –Route to IfPoM

Soundtrack for the exhibition
„Ruhr Ding: Territorien“
May–June 2019

“For the project „Ruhr Ding: Territorien“ by Urbane Künste Ruhr – an exhibition in the public space Bochum, Dortmund, Essen and Oberhausen – Gray produced a soundtrack and uses material recorded on train rides to Folkwang Institute for Pop Music (IfPoM) and weaves it seamlessly with electronic sounds. Human voices, rough traffic noises or morning bird songs – Gray transports these field recordings into virtual instruments and creates an elegiac soundtrack for the feeling of traveling in urban spaces and moving between melancholy vastness and emotional directness.”

About the project:
“On the train, on the motorway or whilst walking through the city, we hear sounds everywhere, whether consciously or unconsciously. Music, audiobooks or news that we listen to on the car radio or via headphones blur together with sounds audible from our environment.

What we hear determines how we perceive our surroundings, how we move, or how long the waiting time for the next train feels. In the Ruhr Area especially, an agglomeration of many small towns and larger cities, being on the move is a daily reality. Likewise, the works of art presented in Ruhr Ding: Territorien (Ruhr Thing: Territories) are dispersed across four different cities in the region. In visiting them, visitors move from place to place through the cities or briefly spend time in between them.

Soundfiles is dedicated to the space in between, being on the move, waiting and arriving. We have asked artists, musicians, DJs and labels based in the region to put together their own soundtrack for travelling in the Ruhr Area and the places that are passed through in the process, the ones they stop at, or others they have always wanted to travel to.

Every week Urbane Künste Ruhr is releasing one of the Soundfiles on their website. In digital form, the soundtracks can be experienced as both autonomous works of art and an all-encompassing acoustic framework for Ruhr Ding: Territorien, boundless and independent of location they can be listened to everywhere.”

Natalie Beridze – Light is winning (Gray Remix)

Remix
September 9, 2016

For the “Love is winning” EP by Natalie Beridze Gray produced a remix for the song “Light is Winning” on the label Monika Enterprise. Further artists on the record are Thomas Fehlmann, Donna Maya, Nikakoi, Lightning Jules, Ivory Bells and Box von Düe. She also produced live visuals for the track.

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