James Gray

By day I am a professional software engineer, but the only reason I went into this line of work is technically because of experimental IDM electronic music from the 90s. (Actually, if I peel it further back, it’s because I got into weird David Firth flash animations on Newgrounds as a teenager, from whose videos I discovered Boards of Canada.)

Accidental Software Engineer

Despite writing software for a living, I was never a “coding since 8 years old” script kiddie, and never really considered it as a future career option. All I cared about as an adolescent was music. In high school I was a card-carrying bandie, enrolled in every music class I could cram into my timetable, and even played in an extracurricular R&B band (shout out to Mr. Whitney and Soul 62, which is still going strong today!) I was fairly good at math and science, but took the bare minimum required to graduate – my heart was in the music.

Through the aforementioned David Firth, I discovered Warp Records around age 15 or 16, and the strange sounds coming from artists on the label quickly put my music taste in a stranglehold for the next several years. I think I had pretty much every Aphex Twin track I could find on the internet on my iPod at the time. This obsession inspired me to mess around with GarageBand (later Logic Pro 8) and make fun little terrible electronic tunes in my spare time.

Warp Records, and IDM more generally, served as my gateway drug to the world of house and techno music. At VEMF (Victoria Electronic Music Festival, RIP), I saw Rennie Foster spin a house set in 2010, which thoroughly entranced me; this led me to dive into the world of house and techno, discovering the BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix archives, and spurring a (thus far) life-long love affair with 4-on-the-floor dance music.

All this led me to apply for the (fantastic!) combined Music and Computer Science program at UVic. I spent five great years learning all about synthesis techniques, music composition, recording techniques, programming, and much more – and met many friends I’m still close with to this day. One of them introduced me to my wife! With friends, I also had a ton of fun making music, like with my pal Jordie as Garden City Disco, as well as DJing (shoutout to the Kisber Avenue sessions with Brennan, Claire, Pascale, Jordie, and Cam!) We spent many evenings playing music on my old Traktor 4 controller over the CFUV airwaves.

I had no delusions about becoming a famous DJ or music producer. Still, my obsession with electronic music gave me ideas of becoming involved in the music industry in some way – perhaps as an audio or recording engineer, or a composer. While I did indeed learn a ton about music, audio and recording while at UVic, and thoroughly enjoyed my time there, the combined nature of the degree somewhat accidentally led me to the discovery that I quite enjoy programming and software development (and was pretty good at it, to boot.)

Never Hoard Your Work

Fast forward to today, where I’ve been working professionally as a software developer for 8 years, and still really enjoy what I do. I wouldn’t be where I am today, however, without music. It’s something I do wrestle with (as does any creative person who makes a living doing something else, which is likely most creative people) – how does one make space for a creative passion while working as a professional? In my case, how do I make time and energy for music making on the computer when I already spend 40 hours a week in front of the computer for money?

I’m still figuring this out, and likely will be throughout the various stages of my life. Admittedly, lately, I’ve been feeling less creative – it’s been almost four years since I last put out music. Recently, however, I was reading the fantastic book “Staying Composed” by Dale Trumbore (the partner of a former colleague of mine at Ableton.) The book discusses how to approach the various troubles and problems of creative work, with many great suggestions, and one that resonated with me was the idea of “never hoarding your work” – compositions or tracks should be shared with the world, regardless of whether or not you think they’re as good as they could be, as every piece of work you produce is part of your creative journey.

In my creative rut, this advice inspired me to dig through my hard drive for old Live projects, where I found a handful of tracks that were basically finished (I just never quite found myself happy with them at the time.) I spent some time late last year polishing them up and mixing them, then sent them over to my friend and fantastic mastering engineer Anthony Shackell for mastering.

Wax Mathews – Works 14-18

The result is my new EP “Works 14-18”, a collection of tracks written and produced sometime or other between 2014 and 2018 – the tail end of my university years and the start of my professional career. As a nice bonus, I’ve found that mixing and polishing up these tunes has helped me brush up my rusty mixing and production skills, and allowed me to get used to my current studio space in our basement, which I’m hoping to parlay into more music-making in the years to come!

Thanks, Bandcamp Exclusive Embed Functionality!

So, there you have it. My pal Steve and I run a label on the side, “Half Past Vibe Records,” and we put these tunes out on Spotify and Bandcamp, available now. I’m pretty proud of these tunes – they represent a sample of a good chunk of my mid-20s, and with them out in the world, more folks than just myself can enjoy them!