SAYA GRAY: Turning Dust Into Sparkles

MUSIC

Dec 8

Saya Gray builds worlds the way some people breathe – instinctively. It’s a way of slipping out of reality and into something freer. Music was her earliest form of escape, a place to dissociate and then reassemble herself, armed with perfect pitch, a double-neck guitar, and a sensitivity so sharp she often retreats to protect it. Her new record, SAYA, carries the rolling motion of mountains, ‘dancing alone in your room’ energy, and the galactic mazes she weaves when she’s building sound. She calls her sonic universe student, water, alien – a place of intuition, texture, radical authenticity, and the alchemy of turning dust into sparkles

You’ve been described as a sonic nonconformist – someone who creates from instinct rather than genre. Do you remember the first sound or instrument that made you feel like music was a language you could speak?

I just used it as an escape to my surroundings. Creating a sonic world was a more direct way of dissociation which turned into more. Thank goodness ! Could have gone the other way.

You grew up surrounded by music from an early age. Can you tell us about the first moment you realised you were listening differently than other kids – when sound started to feel like something you could shape?

I was lucky to have the extreme head start in music class or any part of music education in school. Just like kids who come from athletic backgrounds, I had perfect pitch as a kid and was already teaching, gigging on my instruments at 10 it wasn’t even something I realised more just fell into.

Your songs have an incredible musical intelligence. What’s your writing process like when you’re sculpting a track from the ground up?

Sometimes it’s poetry, sometimes it’s on an instrument, sometimes it’s a sample and sometimes it’s just a random sound or melody that inspires something.

You’ve played so many instruments since childhood – is there one that feels most natural to you?

Bass - it’s the lowest quality of a song and has the most power to me !

Your new record feels like a journey through transformation – emotional, sonic, even geographic. How did travelling through Japan and California shape the frequencies or textures of the album?

It was mainly the travel, driving, road trip nature to travelling that really influenced the sound. The rolling nature of the mountains, the depth to Japan, the hardness and softness !

“I can make your dust turn into sparkles.” It’s a motif that appears across your work. Can you talk about the threads that run from your early projects into SAYA?

I never really saw my early projects as albums more that they were producer mixtapes - ideas all fragmented into projects to pick apart from later. A lot of the SAYA album was just full versions of songs that I had started sampling for 19 masters.

When you’re creating, do you see sound visually? How much does colour, texture, or movement influence your composition?

Definetly more in a synesthesia - the shape, texture, height to something. I see spaces with production. As if you’re walking into a room. What is it you feel and how far are you from that feeling? Who are the characters? Stuff I’m still constantly learning I feel like I’m just a baby still In my journey !!!!

You’ve said before that you resist being boxed in. How do you personally define freedom – both as an artist and as a person?

Radical authenticity !!! And knowing when influence is positive and when you’re sacrificing authenticity for belonging which is our natural tendency and I fall into it - that’s why I tend to isolate to protect my influencial brain. So sensitive !

If you had to describe your sonic world in three words right now, what would they be?

Student, water and alien.

You’ve mentioned you live quite off-grid at times, away from screens. How does solitude influence your creative rhythm?

It just helps if you know how you feel about things !! Versus you picking up some subconscious anger from a neighbor !

Are you more likely to write a song in a burst of intuition or through slow layering and refinement?

Full black out intuition and emotion.

What’s one unconventional recording or production trick that’s made it onto your tracks?

So much are voicenotes. Sometimes the take is just better and you end up using some botched terrible sounding iPhone voice note then an expensive mic - you really can make something out of anything !!

Is there a lyric from your past that keeps echoing in your head – one that means something new to you now?

I’ve been looking for a god everyday it’s a symptom of the system.

What’s something you’ve unlearned in order to grow musically?

Body vs mind - something can technically not work and feel amazing.

What would you say to your younger self who was just beginning to make music?

I wish I got genghis and co. Earlier! The animals really set me up for the path to success since I’ve had them in my life.