Greys Unveil Surprise 'Warm Shadow' LP

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Oct 5, 2016

Following the release of Outer Heaven and "Fresh Hell," Toronto's Greys aren't quite done with 2016 just yet. The band have revealed a second LP titled Warm Shadow, and you can hear it below.

Warm Shadow was developed alongside Outer Heaven, with the band calling it a companion release to their sophomore LP. "It's sort of like our Amnesiac, or Weird Era Continued, or untiled. unmastered., or, hell, Steal This Album by System Of A Down," they wrote on their Bandcamp page.

In an interview with Stereogum, frontman Shehzaad Jiwani explained the companion LP's genesis:

While we were recording [Outer Heaven], there were all these extra elements that we had. I say "elements" because I don't know how else to say it. A lot of sound collages and tape drones. Just little instrumental stuff that we really liked. There's one piece on the record called "Colour Out Of Space" that's just taken from a part of the song "Complaint Rock" from Outer Heaven. Colin would splice this tape loop that was like, several feet long. He would make it on his tape machine, wrap it around a bottle, and splice it all the way back, and we would listen to that while we were doing other stuff. We came up with this idea, "OK, maybe let's just release an EP of all these drones," because it just becomes meditative and you get lost in it really easily. We're a punk band, so it seems a little…maybe a little highfalutin, or something like that, for us. I don't know. We don't really care at this point. People can like it or not like it.

But really the genesis of Warm Shadow came from our friend Ian Gomes, who runs [the Union Sound studio] in Toronto. We had booked some time there to do some video work for Outer Heaven, and that stuff kinda fell through. We had to use the time, and Ian was like "Why don't you come in and we could do some more noise." We were like, "OK, we'll just come in and add to the shit we already have." What ended up happening was…I borrowed this amp from my friend. I ended up writing four of five songs just playing around in my apartment. That was the day before we went in, basically, I wrote a bunch of these tunes, we went into the studio, fleshed them all out in like two days at Union Sound in Toronto. None of us really knew what it was going to come out as, but there are like four or five brand new songs. There's one re-worked song from the Repulsion EP, then the new tunes and the sound collage stuff. It turned into this piece that we were really stoked on because a day before that, it didn't even exist

Warm Shadow will be available as a pay what you can download through Bandcamp until October 12. All proceeds will be donated to Toronto non-profit Sistering, a trans-inclusive agency supporting women across Toronto who experience the impact of marginalization and poverty.

Hear Warm Shadow after scrolling through the band's upcoming fall tour dates below.

Tour Dates:

10/12 Washington, DC - Comet Ping Pong $
10/13 Brooklyn, NY - Aviv $
10/14 Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie $
10/15 Montreal, QC - Turbohaus #
10/16 Saint-Hyacinthe, QC - Le Zaricot #
10/17 Quebec City, QC - L'Anti #
10/19 Halifax, NS - The Marquee *
10/20 Fredericton, NB - The Capitol #
10/21 Ottawa, ON - House Of TARG 
10/26 Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace *
10/28 Brooklyn, NY - Knitting Factory %
10/29 Brooklyn, NY - Knitting Factory %
10/30 Tallahassee, FL - Club Dowunder^
10/31 Mobile, AL - The Merry Widow^
11/02 Oxford, MS - Proud Larry's^
11/03 Memphis, TN - Hi-Tone Cafe^
11/04 Nashville, TN - Drkmttr
11/05 Atlanta, GA - 529
11/06 Richmond, VA - Sound Of Music

* with White Lung
$ with Big Ups
# with Partner
% with Japandroids
^ with Bully

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