Image credit: mattergy
A Beige Kind of Grey is the 1st full length album from improviser/singer-songwriter & interdisciplinary artist Tobias Sarra. The album is a journey through songs and improvisations, featuring distorted ambience, lo-fi wanderings, found sounds and semi-surreal deconstructions.
It touches on themes of depression, self-abuse, obsession, devotion, redemption and the endless beauty of the vast cosmic soup of nothingness in which we reside. It is raw, intimate, and filled with relentless hope.
The album was recorded primarily with a minimalist set-up in DIY home studios, both in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on an island in Arctic Norway. It includes ‘one run’ solo improvisations, live band performances which were added to with additional improvisations, and completely ‘studio’ made pieces, with tracks layered from skeleton to living work.
This process of combining and juxtaposing ‘high-quality’ recordings with lo-fi sounds (including some phone recordings), became an integral part of the process, and heavily influenced the final sound of the album. The messiness of life is revealed and left bare, accentuating the mundanity which infuses it with so much beauty. It allows the breath to be heard, where so often the breath is cut out and stripped from our humanness.
The album was mastered by Rob Griffiths, and includes artistic contributions from Katie Oswell, Diji Solanke, Adam Sams, Stanislav Yudin, Katy Tranter and Moby the cat. Financial support from Arts Council England, Help Musicians UK and multiple generous crowdfunders helped massively in the creation and development of the album. A huge thanks to all those involved!
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