Steep Leans

Grips On Heat

Ghost Ramp

LP $17.50

02/12/2016

GR 008

CD $12.00

10/09/2015 616892338147

MP3 $7.92

09/21/2015 642610484780

GR 008 CD

FLAC $8.99

09/21/2015 642610484780

Steep Leans is the project of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Gray Somers. Developed in late 2012 after the trauma of a death in the family caused Somers to pack up and leave everything behind, going from Boston for New York City, leaving behind a long term relationship, which consequently left him drifting broke and alone in Brooklyn. As a way out of the turmoil, he sold his car and used the money to start the original recordings of Grips On Heat with Jonny Schenke (of Eaters, producer of Parquet Courts Light Up Gold Fame).

Steep Leans began to gain some promising momentum that was quickly foiled as a troubled relationship, constant moving, and lack of stability took its toll. Even the original recordings guided by Schenke were lost. All of this loss left Gray with a clean slate, on home turf and he took advantage.

He immediately put together a live band, and began playing shows around the Boston area. This band took on various members over the last two years, with the most instrumental members being John Brown (World Cup, who Somers plays bass for) and drummer and multi-instrumentalist Chris Eddleston.

Soon after, in the Summer of 2013, Somers, along with Eddleston and Brown, went back into the studio with engineer/producer Shaun Curran in Somerville, MA to begin recording what would become Grips On Heat. The recording process was an intensely cathartic experience, which led to many long sleepless nights, where songs were in a constant in a state of flux, being built up to be deconstructed. The studio, aka the Napoleon Complex, is a windowless bunker of a space, which created a sense of isolation and a psychological void in time, heavily influencing the sort of cavernous and haunted feel of the record.

The record serves as a document of these experiences. An attempt at capturing a snapshot of the feeling of leaving and crossing into the unknown. Using elements of drone and repetition beneath melody and an unfolding lyrical dialogue, Somers acts as the narrator to this midnight road story. The need to get up and go and to not know where to or why, besides the primal desire for freedom. The romance and the misery, and the vastness of it all.