Thomas Gray & Liam Ebbs are a musical duo from Sydney making incredibly beautiful ambient, electronica and deep house tunes based around field recordings from their travels.

We are musicians from Sydney, Australia with releases on Black Wattle, Ken Oath Records, Best Effort Records and Analogue Attic Recordings. Our respective classical and percussion backgrounds have led us to write music that focuses on rhythmic invention and an immersive fusion of organic and electronic sounds. Some of our career highlights include; performing at OHM in Berlin on our short tour of Europe in 2019, performing at Pitch Music and Arts Festival in 2019 and performing live on Cloud Cover (FKA After Hour) on FBI Radio, our local independent radio station in Sydney.

Greatest inspirations or influences?

We find inspiration in people (not necessarily artists) who have unique and captivating energy, often these are our friends and loved ones. Regarding music, it’s a difficult question to answer as both of us go through phases of listening/focusing on specific artists and genres. That being said here’s some artists we are listening to a bit more of late;

• Chassol, Fennesz, Arthur Russell, Benjamin Brunn, Billie Eilish, Bjork, Matthew Halsall, Bon Iver and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Tell us about your creative process

Our creative process is centrally focused on texture/layers. We write with very little intention or idea from the outset, recording layer upon layer of harmonic material until we more or less find the centre point of the work. We then reverse engineer the structure of the piece, starting off with the most climactic and texturally dense part of the piece and then work our way back to the beginning. That is why our pieces generally don’t follow a traditional song structure.

New projects you’re working on?

We are currently working on 3 very different records for Bedroom Suck, Black Wattle and Anjuna Deep. Hopefully one or two of them will be out before the end of the year!

How has covid affected your creativity and how do you see it affecting your industry?

Initially the lockdown period was great fun, however our enthusiasm for getting into the studio has waned over the last month or so. Understanding how important it is to give yourself a break and not stack the pressure on to be productive during this time has made sure we retain some semblance of sanity. 

Moving forward, we don’t really have any idea of the prolonged impacts it will have on the industry. We sincerely hope that everyone can bounce back unscathed and continue to make and facilitate great art.

Thank you guys!

Interview Dani Selva