Live Review: Be captivated by Sig Nu Gris' world on her stellar experimental debut, 'To Un-know'

31 July 2019 | 12:10 pm | Caitlin Medcalf
Originally Appeared In

Melbourne's Sig Nu Gris has today announced her signing to Tim Shiel's label Spirit Level. She debuts with the beautiful 'To Un-know'.

Tim Shiel is the host of Something More on triple j. Outside of presenting on the station, he also runs an artist-run music label called Spirit Level, which houses some of our favourite electronic acts like Braille FaceHemm and more. He's today announced news of a new signing to the label in Melbourne's Sig Nu Gris.

The Melbourne-based sound designer draws on influences from all realms of electronic music. She brings in inklings of club, ambient and experimental sounds for a melting pot of visceral images and hauntingly delicate arrangements.

Her debut track comes to us today and is titled 'To Un-know'. It's a beautifully spacious track, her arrangement filling in the gaps of silence with soft bouts of echo and reverb, never leaving you with a pause in the continuum. The mood of the track ebbs and flows as instruments draw us in and quickly suck us out.

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Sampling is the glue of this track, allowing her to piece together the varying moods and genres with delicately weaved and affected sounds and motifs. A female vocal - presumably hers - croons throughout but moreso as an instrument and not a melodic vocal as traditionally such.

She's flipping the script and recontextualising electronic music in a thoughtful and evocative way. 'To Un-know' is a breathtaking first offering, giving us a little peek into the mind of Sig Nu Gris and how she operates creatively.

Of the track, she said:

"When making music, part of me tries to create something that will tickle the ears of other people and produce an interesting sonic or emotional experience. The power of every frequency in a song has always been super intense to me, so I’ve always wanted to relay some of those spine-tingling emotional experiences onto other people.

"The photo on the cover speaks to me because when I took it, I felt so much clarity. Being in nature as well as being up so high, having just hiked all the way up there, definitely just gave me a particular sense of being at ease that I don't think I'd ever had before. I tried to channel that feeling into this track."

Photo by Aneta Urbonaite

Words by CAITLIN MEDCALF

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