TALKING SHOP
GRYPHON RUE
The unique NY artist tells us what drives him, from Portastudios and Pro Tools to Prince
© Lena Shkoda
Gryphon Rue’s music isn’t easy to categorise; one moment he’ll be thrashing out Krautrockesque drum grooves, and the next he’s warping the sounds of his own stomach into densely textured electroacoustic noise. If there’s one thread running through his diverse catalogue, it’s a commitment to experimentation and a willingness to plunge into the unknown, taking the listener along for the ride.
A multi-disciplinary artist, composer and musician based in New York, Rue has released music on a variety of cultish imprints that includes Not Not Fun and Astral Editions. He describes his latest project, 4n_Objx, as “more diverse” than anything he’s done before; where previous albums such as 2022’s A Spirit Appears to a Pair of Lovers stretched out towering synth drones into the cosmos, 4n_Objx brings us back down to earth with the intoxicating pulse of Rue’s s equencers and drum machines.
It’s an eclectic project, consistently dodging expectations throughout its ten tracks; High Priestess recalls the frenetic, oddball dance music of James Holden, before we’re thrown into a disorienting spiral on Dividend, which sounds like nothing more than a piano reflected by a funhouse mirror. Alluvials crashes field recordings up against hypnotic arpeggios, while World’s Fastest Talking Man moulds recordings of Rue’s father’s voice into a gibbering accompaniment for a cascading ensemble of synths. 4n_Objx is an unapologetically strange record, and all the better for it.