GRiZ (2019)

One Liner: The EDM guy with the saxophone

Wikipedia Genre: Electronica, trip hop, dubstep, glitch hop, future funk
Home: Denver

Poster Position: 6

Both Weekends.

Thoughts: This guy is kinda awesome.  I forget the exact circumstances, but when he was here in 2015, I ended up in the Tito's tent to see him play.  Here is the postmortem I wrote:

GRiZ.  Holy crap.  Next time I bag on EDM artists, remind me of this show.  I had more fun bouncing around with the children at this stage than I did for just about any show of the whole weekend.  Pre-show, I was hanging with Jeff from Kansas City (who called me "sir," a-hole) and I asked him how old the oldest person in the tent was.  He guessed mid-30's, and after I told him I was 39, he got very excited and told me he hoped he was still doing this stuff when he was 39.  For real doh, I was without any doubt the oldest person I could see in that tent.  This guy plays electronic dance music with his laptop and some other little dials and switches up there on stage, but he also fires out a real deal saxophone to jam in the middle of songs.  And it totally and completely works.  Everyone in that tent was jumping and bouncing and sweating along to those tunes.  Speaking of sweating, I had this very clear memory while in that tent of the mosh pits of my childhood at Liberty Lunch, where the actual air you are breathing is very obviously the hot, wet, smelly air that the people around you just expelled out of their bodies.  I mean, it was suffocating in there.  And I got soaked. But freaking fun!  A young couple near me also complimented me on my knowledge of Dr. Dre lyrics during the show.  Don't test me on the opening bars of "G Thang," yo.  I am the man.  Oh, and that reminds me - kids these days! - everyone in that room knew the opening bars to The Jackson 5's "ABC," Earth Wind & Fire's "September," and some other old ass song where I was shocked that people under 40 even knew what it was.  People literally singing along to Earth Wind & Fire at the top of their lungs?  What is in those drugs?

Electronic groove.  Some of this reminds me of Paper Diamond, which I found at ACL a few years ago, with EDM that is less proper formulaic build/drop and more into a jazzy free groove electro sound.  The most popular track on Spotify back in 2015, which exemplifies that exactly, is "Smash the Funk."  6.3 million streams.

I dig that song for sure.  Starts and goes back to electro jazz, but then drops some hard distortion sliding in there to keep his EDM cred strong.  Although, that video is a little annoying that it cuts out the music here and there to let him talk about how cool it is to play music to people.  Kind of funny that he actually plays the sax part to his EDM.  Not the norm.  And if you keep listening to his tunes, the sax comes out in just about every song. Sexy Saxman!

This, and the majority of his older music, are reminding me of being in a hip clothing store or something. Urban Outfitters or a boutique haberdashery in the downtown business district. Its very hip, melding jazz and funk with electro.  I spent most of Friday afternoon jamming it and liking it, despite feeling like I'm being seduced by something I should be shunning.  It makes me bob my head, and I listened to it longer than I had to, so it has something going for it.  

He has six albums, all since 2011, with the most recent being 2019's Ride Waves.  His most listened-to song is "Good Times Roll" from 2016's Good Will Prevail, that also features Big Gigantic.  26.3 million streams.

Is that an electronic sax in there?  Or just a synth?  Either way, the fact that the sax pops up sooner or later in each song is kind of fun.  And while he has six albums of original material, the best stuff in the live show I saw was when he sampled and mashed up classic tracks.  These shows are a party.  Although now that he is on the sixth line of the poster, and has a bunch of his own music, I wonder if the mashup will still be part of it?

Top track from his new album so far is "I'm Good," with 1.4 million streams.  That is less than a month since it was released, so he's making some good numbers.

His music has morphed some from the jazzy stuff and into more normal EDM sounds, but the saxophone still keeps it different enough to be interesting.  But that track is funky - not EDM at all for big chunks of it, but I can see it being a fun one to jam out to with a crowd.

I like the fact that this is a different sound than most of the other EDM artists coming to ACL (although this guy might be the biggest EDM artist at the fest this year), so we'll see how the schedule works out, I might be out there to see him.