Gramatik continues to prove himself as a relentless musical force, consistently putting out new releases and making people lose their marbles at his sold-out shows all over the world. Following last year’s album Epigram and subsequent remix EP’s, he started 2017 with a string of single releases, often in collaboration with friends and new faces on the scene, while also gracing the stage at some of the biggest summer festivals like EDC Las Vegas, Camp Bisco, Lollapalooza, Moonrise and more.
As mentioned, he has been extremely busy in the studio as well. In January there was a longawaited reunion with another funk mastermind, GRiZ, on “As We Proceed”. The new GRiZMATiK track received excellent reviews from outlets like Dancing Astronaut, Run The Trap,EDM.com and plenty more, while also exceeding 1.2M plays on SoundCloud and almost reaching 2M on Spotify. Gramatik followed it up with a remix of Flume’s track “Wall Fuck” (1.16M plays on SC) which he produced with young Canadian artist, Ramzoid. The track was premiered on notorious Colorado-based blog Thissongissick, reached #1 on SoundCloud’s electronic chart and also performed well on Hype Machine. Then it was time to focus on the three singles leading up to his latest EP, “Re:Coil Part I”; on “Recovery” Gramatik teamed up with old buddy Eric Krasno and the bright, melodic jam caught the attention of Billboard who snagged it for an exclusive premiere. The next single, “Voyager Twins” was a collaboration with mysterious, Armada-affiliated Galactic Marvl. Reaching out to Gramatik’s European fans as well, it was premiered in France on Tsugi and on Dancing Astronaut in the US. On the last single from new EP he joined forces with new Lowtemp signee, Balkan Bump. Premiering on Konbini and Thissongissick, the single’s title “Aymo” translates to “let’s go” in the majority of ex-Yugoslavian countries, including Slovenia, where Gramatik is from originally.
Appropriately, the single dropped just before Gramatik headed out on a huge fall tour in the EU,visiting 26 cities in France, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Austria,Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Romania and Serbia. During the tour, on October 20th, he treated his fans to the release of “Re:Coil Pt. I’' EP and just like the year before when he was dropping “Epigram”, the release party for the heavily anticipated new release took place at the legendary Paris venue, Le Zenith.
While on tour, there will be another important milestone waiting for Gramatik on November 9th during his show in Zurich. As one of the pioneering artists embracing crypto-culture and the new blockchain-based technologies that work towards decentralization, he will be launching his own token, GRMTK, in collaboration with SingularDTV. This revolutionary new approach promises a convergence of network and data that will allow creators to bypass gatekeepers and intermediaries and seize control of their intellectual property. The event will be streamed live and will likely bring Gramatik one step closer to what he has always strived for - complete independence.
Certainly, 2017 will go down as one of the most busy and productive years in Gramatik’s career path and he will put a stamp on it with a huge NYE show at New York City’s Terminal 5 where he will be joined by Big Wild, Ramzoid and Cobrayama. But the extraordinary year should not come as a surprise as some of his recent highlights also include a combined 1,193,343,382 plays on YouTube, his track “Torture” appearing in the trailer for Netflix’s high-profile show Narcos, an interview for “This Is Life with Lisa Ling” on CNN, and 4 consecutive sold out shows at Red Rocks. With plenty more releases in the books and another busy festival season looming in the distance, Gramatik has things figured out and seems to know exactly which direction to take next.
