Experimental noise quartet Greys found influence in a range of sources for today's featured Song of the Day: novelist/activist James Baldwin, skateboard videos, the Roland SH-101, and a 2018 mass shooting in their hometown of Toronto, to name a few points of inspiration. In an in-depth interview with Consequence of Sound, frontman Shehzaad Jiwani elaborates:
I watched I Am Not Your Negro when it came out and a quote that stuck with me was, 'All your buried corpses now begin to speak,' which is paraphrased at the end of the song. Some of the lyrics touch on police brutality and the systematic displacement of marginalized people, both of which are subjects Baldwin had addressed so eloquently. What struck me about him was how he was able to effectively change people’s minds about such complex issues at such a politically charged moment in history. He seemed like such a gentle person, and his measured, compassionate way of debating made me long for a time where people were able to discuss such heavy topics in public forums and actually hear each other, as evidenced by many of his talk show or roundtable appearances. My vocal delivery was partly inspired by this approach in that I tried to sing more softly about the issues than yell them over the noise.
He adds:
Lots of senseless things happened in Toronto last year while we were making this record. There was a mass shooting, which is one of the first I’ve heard of happening here and I have lived in Toronto my entire life. There was the incident involving the man who ran over dozens of people on a crowded street with a van. On top of that, conservative charlatan Doug Ford (brother of the deceased crack-smoking mayor and hapless idiot Rob Ford) was elected premiere of Ontario, almost immediately cutting funds to things like green energy and overdose-prevention centers. So much of what I love about my city is being eradicated, and I wanted to address that in a way that was both impressionistic and abstract, which we attempted to convey with the video as well.
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