I grew up in suburban Canada. I spent a lot of time making up songs on this old upright piano we had. I remember once I took it apart and found a bunch of antique keys and bits of sheet music from the 1800s inside. I spent hours in my bedroom mixing records on home turntables, splicing tape loops together and learning to make sounds on a synthesizer. My taste was all over the place: Sade, New Order, John Coltrane, Bjork.
At 18 I moved to downtown Toronto to DJ and work in studios. I ended up working with a lot of great people. Along the way I did remixes for Tori Amos, Thomas Dolby and Esthero under the name Gavo. I scored a Billboard Dance Hot Plate for my remix of Nelly Furtado's I'm Like A Bird and a Best RnB Juno for work on Jacksoul's Sleepless album.
Recently I felt the need to sit down with that old piano and write some songs of my own again. (I've always sung too...but only in secret until recently.) I recorded my debut CD, Deep Freeze, at home in the living room of a high rise. It's painted a very dark green, there's old wooden furniture and new blinking equipment all around me, and I've got this high up view of the downtown core... It feels like the pulse of the city is always around me but I look out on it from my own private, insular world...people who know me say the album captures that.
James Bryan (of Philosopher Kings and Prozzak fame) has released Deep Freeze in Canada on his new label UMI Entertainment.
So these days I divide my time between my solo project and production work for other artists. I'm working on projects for Dido and Alex Band (lead singer of The Calling, and my house production team Righteous is releasing our second single on Refunkt Records in the UK - it's called Love Is Love and it features New York house legend MJ White on vocals.
