American electronic musician, film composer and sound designer Katie Gately utilises a wide range of computer programs to reshape her voice into dense, unsettling soundscapes. Today she releases her highly personal album ‘Loom’, which was dedicated to her late mother. Stream the album in full below, and get introduced to her work before she joins us for what promises to be an emotive live performance at Rewire 2020.
“My mother’s voice is in this record, her picture’s in the sleeve notes. This record is for her” says Katie. Recorded after her mother was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, on ‘Loom’ Katie Gately deals with the enormity of loss by adding the seismic rumble and aural grit of real earthquake recordings in her productions- to signify how grief like this is like the shifting of the earth. Departing from the fractured rhythms and pop hooks of her 2016 album ‘Colour’, her new record ‘Loom’ reveals crepuscular textures. Her voice is more prominent in the mix, often densely layered in choral laments above a coarse foundation of hard and brittle sound design. Stream the album in full here:
Music, for Katie Gately, has always been highly personal- she is always seeking a close connection to sounds she comes into contact with. It will come as no surprise that she has stories to accompany each of her favourite records, which include albums by the likes of Joy Division, Low, Philip Glass and Joanna Newsom. She discussed these in detail with The Quietus’ Ben Graham for their longstanding Baker’s Dozen feature.
As a film composer and sound designer, the moving image obviously has a great deal of influence on her work. She joined The Wire to give some of her favourite examples of films with great sound design, including feature-lengths from Tarkovsky and Lynch.
Watch the video for ‘Waltz’ here, directed by Samantha Shay:
→ https://www.youtube.com/embed/dt-ArjL2guM?feature=oembed
Katie Gately performs live on
Friday 3 April
at Rewire 2020.