Shards of Grey

Steven Grey & Timmy

We are Shards of Grey, a musical passion project lead by vocalist and producer Steven Grey. We believe in music not confined by genre. We believe in lyrics informed by personal experience and private reflections.

Timmy is up in this bitch too, and has also seen some shit.

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New singles out by year's end

Steven Grey

behind the voice

Steven Grey is the voice behind Shards of Grey. But Steven is more than just a vocalist, collectively contributing to about half the music overall, and serving as the main producer, putting in long hours in the studio to make sure every song, section, chord and note sounds exactly as it should. Everything you hear is funneled through, approved, and tweaked by Steven. This goes beyond just the music-- Steven even personally designs the artwork for album covers and other promotional images.

Lyrically, Steven Grey is, to put it mildly, uh, rather blunt. Whether he's singing about a lost love, or one of the unfortunate subjects of one of his "hate ballads", you are getting his unfiltered, most personal feelings and thoughts, often dressed up in little if any metaphor. Steven started his musical journey at a point when he found his life had been completely dismantled, and music is the catharsis that helped put the pieces back together.

PS: Steven is so involved with every aspect of this band, that maybe he even wrote this. Maybe he should get someone for stuff like this. Maybe he should stop lording over every detail. We have no comment at this time.

Timmy

behind the music

Whenever you hear a guitar in a Shards of Grey song, that's Timmy. But Timmy is more than just a guitarist, collectively contributing to about half the music overall, as a multi- instrumentalist and seasoned producer. Timmy lives and breathes music daily, and has been playing and writing for years.

Most people that know him would agree that Timmy is a little, uh, rough around the edges, but that provides just the kick needed to put a song over the top. In the studio, Timmy will often pace around, delivering long passionate pleas for why a song or section should be exactly the way he hears it in his head. Steven will tend to let this play itself out, even when he agrees with the idea from the onset, because he's a motherfucker like that some times.

PS: Steven Grey has read this and conceded that he is indeed a motherfucker some times. "But Tim too", he added.

Who the fuck is Sir Bixby McBreakbeaty?

behind the beats

Bixby is as mysterious and shy as he is eccentric, somehow. He doesn't particularly like to be focused on too much, so he rarely prefers to be mentioned outside of song credits. He doesn’t like to have his picture taken, which is odd because he is always dressed to the nines. Sir Bixby is an Englishman who owns more top hats than anyone we've ever known (the previous record in our circle being zero).

Whenever you hear drums or beats in a Shards of Grey Song, that's Bixby, and that's all this bloody chap does, which is completely fine since he is an absolute prodigy. He knows every style we've thrown at him, and is just as capable on the drum pads as he is on the skins.

"Although I am plenty versed in most golden and silver age stylings, I dare not chastise progression", he once said, "as I am most certainly also into that new shit."

PS: The rumors as to his “real” identity are unfounded. Besides, dude just wants to play drums, and we are cool with that.

About the Forthcoming Debut Album

A massive effort years in the making

We always knew our style would keep evolving. You may have heard the saying that “Art is never finished, but merely abandoned”. Well, that is slightly less the case for Shards of Grey.

From the start, we wanted to make an EP, and then expand that body of work into a full length album/LP. But more than that, we also wanted to improve, remaster, or completely re-do the songs on the original EP, which we also did.

Once we had what we knew would be the full body of work for the album, we started to think about the music as an album. When it comes to our musical genre, we are still not sure we have one. As an example, look no further than the EP track “Summer to Fall” where the song is mostly folk influenced but then slides seamlessly into a dubstep-inspired breakdown.

One of the self imposed limitations that we put in place while making the EP was that any guitars present should be acoustic (a rule which we routinely broke, particularly on the track “The Greatest Act“). For the album, we have come to appreciate crunchy rock-influenced guitars as a mainstay instead. Other tracks on the EP had a very strong synth influence, like with Mysteria. We narrowed the album down to two genres for stylistic consistency: Rock, with a heavy synth element, and a kind of indie synth-pop, with a dash of guitars. As a result, every song on the EP has gone through significant changes for the album version, with several getting just full remasters, and others having been re-written from the ground up.

We also have gone back and forth on how we should use song structures on the album. You might have noticed that every song on the EP is notably longer than your average song— and the debate was to either shorten things or lean into longer structures. While there is certainly some balance to this, and we made sure no one section goes on too long (there’s one song that might even be shorter), overall we decided to go full prog and lean into longer songs. Did the album version of Summer To Fall need a second outro? Once you hear it, we think you’ll agree that it’s great addition to the song. However, the best example of this on the album is the closing track, that will clock in at over thirteen minutes. Don’t take this to mean that you’ll get bored with that one though— the song has three very different movements that segue seamlessly between each other as an intro, features two verses which are completely musically distinct from another, and three different styles for the choruses. The choice also means that the album simply contains… just a lot of fucking music— it will just barely fit on the typical 75 minute CD format.

Some of these songs have been waiting a very long time to be heard. One of these tracks is actually the first first song Shards of Grey ever wrote together. Additionally, you’ll finally get to hear the emotional conclusion of the story to Steven Grey’s “Darkest Year”— the end to which is hinted at in the album’s title: “Perseverance”.

Contact

Media inquires:
media@shardsofgrey.com

Booking inquires:
booking@shardsofgrey.com

General/feedback/fan mail:
general@shardsofgrey.com

Hate mail:
trash@shardsofgrey.com

OH HEY, FOR BEST VIEWING, YOU'LL NEED TO TURN YOUR PHONE