Saya Gray
Seasoned session bassist's solo work is turning into something special
Saya Gray is a 27-year-old bassist from Toronto, Canada who made her name as a session player — playing bass both live and in-studio. The child of professional trumpet player, Charlie Gray, and the founder of “Discovery Through the Arts” (a music academy in Canada), Madoka Murata, she's been able to have steady gigs since her early teens and has been touring the world for over a decade now. She finally released her self-produced solo debut, 19 Masters, in June of 2022.
Her nomadic touring life was likely a big contribution to its distinctive style with bits & pieces recorded here and there while on the road — combined with recordings of her mother speaking Japanese, a few guitar parts played by her brother, and trumpet played by her father. She occasionally indulges in a little too much “boy talk”, but the chaotic production generally holds my attention.
I can’t really learn other people’s songs anymore without doing my own thing first... they’re like, ‘can you not just play bass chords over this, just play the part?’ That isn’t for me anymore.
Her newest EP, QWERTY (May 25, 2023), isn’t much of a departure from her debut, but much more percussion focused. The same quirks in production as before, but now she’s incorporating more live and live sampled drums — very DnB-y at times.
The penultimate song ends with some clichéd metal riff, as a bit of a joke it would seem… but it comes back in the final song. Conceptually I like it, but the guitar tone is kinda killing me. I think it could work with a less generic, preset-sounding tone to it.
While it’s good to see her progressing in her production, I think it would be interesting for her to now take the approach from these last two releases and explore deeper & more complex melodic structures, but with the same chaotic and scattered production.
She's pretty much non-existent on social media, and beyond stuff from sponsorships [Fender, etc.] and a few articles1 about her debut, there really isn't much info about her online.
As of writing I’ve only seen The Fader mention her newest EP — which neglected to mention the DnB influence, or that it kinda felt like the second disc of a double album. While nothing groundbreaking [is that even possible anymore?], it’s fun to hear her explore some new [to her] sonic ground. You can hear the potential for something even better, as long as she keeps pushing herself to explore new production techniques & melodic themes — and as long as she doesn’t get stuck in a rut, something will eventually click and she could have something really amazing.