Gorgon City. Courtesy of Will Robson-Scott.
Will Robson-Scott
Dynamic duo Gorgon City, composed of Kye Gibbon and Matt Robson-Scott, is best known for delivering its distinct fusion of bass-driven house music and captivating vocals. Today, June 25, the North London pair showcase a club-focused sound that’s inspired by performing at live events prior to the pandemic on their latest album, Olympia.
The 18-track body of work delivers tons of sonic flavor as it explores themes of love and loss through effervescent beats, powerful and addictive vocals, emotive piano chords, bass-driven production, organic sounds, melancholic house, groovy melodies and more. Gorgon City’s third LP proves to be an anthemic album designed for pure dancefloor euphoria.
The LP title is a nod to the Greek mythology creative roots of the Gorgon City project, and this theme is represented across the album. Olympia marks the sanctuary site of where people would gather to praise Zeus in ancient Greece. Similarly, Gorgon City’s Olympia pays homage to the historical ritual while looking ahead to the return of collective euphoria.
Keeping in step with the duo’s tradition, Olympia showcases up-and-coming singers and songwriters outside of the dance music scene, with the LP featuring 11 singers, including Drama, Aura James, Hayley May, Jem Cooke and Josh Barry.
Here, Gorgon City shares the inspiration behind Olympia, why Greek mythology is key to the Gorgon City project, stories behind the tracks on the LP and more.
Lisa Kocay: What was the inspiration behind your album, Olympia?
Gorgon City: “We wanted to make a club inspired album. For the last few years, we’ve approached our album music and our club music as almost two completely separate projects. The more underground/club-focused material we released on Realm, and our remixes for labels like Crosstown Rebels, Suara, Defected, etc. have always been produced very differently to our studio albums. With Olympia, we really wanted to combine the two worlds and make an album that you can really play in the clubs as well as at home. We wanted to bring our Realm sound into this album.
“Due to the pandemic, the album release date got delayed about four times. We ended up using this extra time to keep tweaking and working on more music for it, so the original 12-track album turned into 18, and [it] sounds very different to how it did. Although the delays for the album were frustrating at the time, we’re glad we had this time to add some extra dimensions to the project. There’s some deeper, darker, reflective moments on the album that channels the state of mind we were in at the time. We feel like it’s our best body of work to date because we’ve been able to have these more experimental moments on the album.”
Kocay: The album showcases big club sounds. Were you inspired to go this route due to the pandemic and the return of shows?
Gorgon City: “After our last album, we had a huge couple of years of gigs. Before the pandemic, we were playing at some of the biggest crowds we’ve ever played to. It definitely had a huge impact on the style of music we played in our DJ sets and the music we made in the studio. We really wanted the album to have a ‘big room’ sound. We’ve been listening to and playing more techno and big room house than ever before, so we wanted the album to reflect that. We’ve always loved the contrast of having songs about heartbreak mixed with huge rave sounds.”
Kocay: Can you share any stories on how some of the tracks were created on the LP?
Gorgon City: “The track ‘Dreams’ actually started out in 2018 as a demo called ‘Kalimba Jam.’ I was staying at an Airbnb in Chicago before I moved here, and it randomly had a kalimba on the floor. I was bored one day and recorded a song on it. We forgot about it until we worked with Jem Cooke. We played her some demos and she really loved the jam. We recorded the song to it. We ended up completely changing the production in the end, but you can still hear the poorly recorded kalimba riff in the final product.”
Kocay: This is the first album where you two had to write the tracks completely separate due to being in different countries. What was this experience like?
Gorgon City: “We’ve actually always done this to an extent. When we were touring a lot, we’d be producing separately when on the road, and when we got back to the studio in London, we’d combine our ideas and polish them off together. So doing things separately wasn’t new to us, but it definitely took things to the extreme on this album. We didn’t have the luxury of being able to finish off the projects together, so it took some communication to agree on finalizing tracks, song structures and final mixes. One positive aspect, though, of me being in Chicago and Matt being in London is that we could use the time zone difference to our advantage. Before one of us went to bed, we could upload the Ableton project to Dropbox and when the other woke up, they could work on it. [It] was extremely useful when up against deadlines.”
Gorgon City perform at Miami’s Club Space. Courtesy of @adiadinayev.
@adiadinayev
Kocay: The album name is a nod to the Greek mythology creative roots of the Gorgon City project. What inspired you to have this theme be the core of the project?
Gorgon City: “We’ve always been fascinated by Greek mythology and stories. We have always felt that there is kind of ‘magic’ to that period of history and culture. We love the way we can use that to create a whole world we can take people to in our music, and always having this creativity at the root of what we do really helps us tie together what we do. It’s something that we always bring into the visuals of our live shows. We love the juxtaposition of such an ancient and lost world with an extremely modern and electronic world.”
Kocay: How did you pick the name of the album? What does Olympia mean to you beyond the Greek mythology roots of the project?
Gorgon City: “Olympia in itself was an ancient sanctuary, and during the pandemic we definitely felt we could make use of one of those. Having such a mysterious and magical location to have in the back of your mind while making music really helps, especially when you’re locked up in an apartment for over a year.”
Kocay: Has the pandemic changed your production and creative process? If so, how?
Gorgon City: “We had eight years of touring as Gorgon City before the pandemic and during that time, we never really had more than two weeks at home. We were always busy. There was always inspiration and energy to draw from, so when we found ourselves at home for such an extended period of time, it was at times really difficult to find motivation and purpose. However, having such an extended period of time without being rushed has really given us time to take a step back and breathe. We had time to experiment with song writing, production styles and discovering new production techniques. I definitely feel like our sound has matured because of this. Perhaps without this break, the only music we would have been surrounded by would have been our peers in the touring scene. Having this time at home has really gotten us to dive deeper into discovering new music.”
Kocay: How did you start making music, and how has that shaped the music you make today?
Gorgon City: “One thing I and Matt both have in common is that we grew up listening to a lot of UK underground dance music, specifically ‘90s jungle and drum’n’bass. This music has a real deep and heavy sub-bass influenced by dub and reggae culture. This sub-bass has always been at the heart of how we make our music—even though we make predominantly house music, we always focus on the bassline.”
Kocay: Do you remember the first electronic music song you heard that made you fall in love with the genre?
Gorgon City: “Roni Size’s album New Forms from 1997 was definitely a pivotal moment. I actually stole the CD from my mum, and she’s still mad at me about it today. The Ed Rush & Optical remix of [Roni Size’s] track ‘Watching Windows’ is the track that inspired me to want to make electronic music—not sure what it was about it, but it blew my mind at the time.”
Kocay: If you could go back in time to when you first started making music and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Gorgon City: “Relax. Don’t overthink things. I remember always thinking there was a right and wrong way of doing things or a ‘secret’ to it. I focused too much on the technical side of things, obsessing over minor mix details and trying to make things perfect instead of just having fun and letting the creativity flow. [I] wasted years doing this. I always find our best songs have been written in the shortest time—where we haven’t even been thinking about the final product. We almost switch our brains off and let the song write itself. Easier said than done, but always good to remind ourselves to just try and let go every so often.”
