Glenn Morrison has had repeat success in the Billboard pop world over the past 5 years and his new single ‘All For You’ featuring Rumors is a beautiful piece of music hearkening back to the era of his multi-platinum record selling hit single ‘Goodbye’ feat. Islove, which went Number 1 across 7 countries to date, including a Number 1 in Canada for 11 weeks straight.
Dying Light Records is a perfect vehicle to release this incredible piece of music and the backstory of the record is wonderful – Glenn Morrison had Rumors perform live at the MUZ Awards, live in Khazakstan to 35,000 people in Astana Stadium – replete with TV and press and a live broadcast of 80 million people.
It was single-handedly the largest live piano pop performance that Glenn Morrison had ever done – and bringing his musical friend Rumors on the road was a wonderful experience. Fast forward a year later, and they have written many records together which we are unveiling over the course of 2017.
‘All For You’ is a love record – it’s flighty, light-hearted, whimsical and melancholy.
He takes time out from the studio to have a chat to us about all things music and more.
T.H.E – You have a significantly diverse sound. How would you describe your music?
Glenn Morrison – I appreciate you saying that, thank you. We had tried for many years to figure out exactly how to get people to understand who I am, what I am about as an artist and a person – basically, how can people understand Glenn Morrison better? I come from the more artist / composer / non technical side of things and I resisted tons of various social media platforms for years. And I fully appreciate and understand that today you need to be professional in all of your social media portals. You need to be engaging with fans and people want to engage with you in a lifestyle kind of way. So I am humbled by all of my team and those who are working with me right now on all of these areas. We are focusing on the quality of the art, we are focusing on growing our catalog for the 4 record labels that we set up last year (each catering to a particular stylistic head-space that I enjoy writing and recording), and we are focused on building an awareness into my studio Alpine Mastering here in Toronto. The root of it all is that I really am passionate about music in many of its forms, and I am deeply connected to the art form itself – all the materialistic pleasantries that come from having hit records always come when you have great art. Furthermore, since I’ve had much success over the years I am now wanting to be more humbled in allowing people to come into my life as a team, and help us build something special.
T.H.E – Where does your new single ‘All For You’ sit genre wise?
Glenn Morrison – That’s a great question. I’d describe ‘All For You’ as an electronic pop dance record….. The original mix has a very trap drop section and lots of melodic elements strewn throughout. Also pianos abound and intricate groove patterns and rhythms. There is also a 4/4 mix on the B Side which is more club radio centered, and my friends in the UK, internationally celebrated writers and artists, Soulseekerz – they did a couple remixes as well for radio and for club world. Very uplifting piano anthem house vibes and these guys are just class through and through. I love the whole release package, it’s very fresh to me. And of course the Rumors guys are terrific – friends of mine for a couple years now and we’ve done a number of creative projects together over the years.
T.H.E – How did you hook up with Rumors to vocal this track?
Glenn Morrison – Yes we have had many years of writing together. I also invited Rumors to sing live when I had to perform my hit single ‘Goodbye’ in Kazakhstan to 35,000 people at Astana Stadium. It was their MUZ TV awards (Russian equivalent of Grammy Awards), and ‘Goodbye’ was a big hit over there – a number 1 on the overall all genre Billboard Chart. They wanted me to perform on a grand piano with the singer Islove, though Islove couldn’t make it and I wanted to invite Rumors because he was my friend and we were doing a lot of writing projects for various artists and labels, and Universal Music Group at the time.
T.H.E – How was the recording process?
Glenn Morrison – The guys sent me over the pianos and vocals and right off the gate within hours I had a very nice bedrock foundation for the arrangement, the melodic layers, new strings, tons of little subtleties and nuances that make a record vibe. It took me a lot longer to get the record from 90% to 100% then it did from 0 – 90% if that makes any sense. I just wanted the final tweaks to sit right and I have a tendency to be OCD on particular things within a record or a mix. I don’t want to rush the creative potential of a record for the sake of hitting a target release date. This is not effective and it is sacrilegious to the idea of creating beautiful art.
T.H.E – What’s your studio set up like?
I am most proud of my new Alpine Mastering studio that we just finished building / designing / creating for myself in the spring of 2016. Terry from Group One Acoustics did the acoustic drawings, and we had over 300 hours of custom millwork and staining. I wanted the panel to be a soft fabric so that way the sound wouldn’t be so clinical and dead (as with just paint for example), and I really was inspired by David Geffen and the Bob Dylan tour bus that was all lined and fitted to be made into a vocal booth mini studio room. This room however is anything but mini – it fits all of my outboard gear (full gear list you can see at www.alpinemastering.com) , and also I put in some custom GU10 LED’s for different colours to set the vibe of the room when creating and composing. With heavy red velvet drapes and unique furniture from my travels around the world, it is really a place where you lose yourself into a musical world – and I believe it is making me a better songwriter, and certainly a better producer, by being in such a professional environment.
T.H.E – Were you always musically inclined growing up?
Glenn Morrison – I was from an early age playing classical piano and performing / competing around Canada. This was a huge part of my life growing up until around my teenage years when I started to dabble in electronic music – tapes of Adam Beyer’s Drumcode or burned CDs from an ex girlfriend of Paul Oakenfold’s Essential Mix in Shanghai 99…. I was all over the map stylistically with electronic music – I just loved the new timbres and textures that came from the sounds of synths and electronic instruments. Migrating or fusing the knowledge of what I had from the classical piano / Royal Conservatory of Music arena, into the electronic side = this was a marriage that I entertained since the outset of my career.
T.H.E – Who would you say your main influences are?
Glenn Morrison – Freddie Mercury, Frank Zappa, Rick Rubin, David Geffen, Peter Grant, these are definitely some of my inspirations. Beautiful minds and they had such a great vision for how they saw the record industry, as well as how they had their own views on how they created/marketed their records. I’ve been doing this for many years now and as I get older I appreciate the idea of focusing on the art and the careful execution of a project release, only then to let everything else take care of itself.
T.H.E – What Glenn Morrison release are you most proud of to date?
Glenn Morrison – It’s hard to say because I’m emotionally invested in all of my records. I am very proud of my various record accomplishments over the years and my happiness on a record isn’t dictated by the success of it. For example, the underground modal techno music that I love to sign and make on Fall From Grace Records is a passion project – it makes me nothing at all compared to the commercial or classical projects – I do it for the true love of the art itself. And I believe that creates something very beautiful for those who follow the label and the brand – we are true studio musicians and session producers working each day on trying to create cutting edge electronic music. If it reacts with people in a big way – wonderful. If it is more of a niche thing that we just happen to love doing – wonderful. It is about the art and the beauty behind writing that art. The rest is then left up to the individual listener to determine how they feel about it.
T.H.E – Do you enjoy playing live or prefer to DJ?
Glenn Morrison – I miss playing as I was heavily touring for many years. The only difference now is that if I was to go back to tour mode then I want to do it properly – with agents who are passionate about what I’m doing creatively, and to be able to perform at venues that are suitable to the style of music that I want to perform. As you know, I am all over the place stylistically and that is why we set up 4 record labels to each suit a different purpose. I just want to be booked to perform and based on the gig I will adapt to make it that “Glenn Morrison” style of live performance. Am I performing a commercial set and audience? Is it a TV or Awards show performance with a piano and no Djing? Is it a Fall From Grace Ibiza night with turntables and underground house until 8 am? These are all completely different scenarios and vibes so we need to treat each booking properly and the agents have to understand how to sell me as an artist.
T.H.E – Any more releases in the pipeline we should be excited about?
Glenn Morrison – Since June of 2016, we have released over 200 individual tracks, spanning 53 record releases, covering 4 labels. Throughout the course of 2017 we will be releasing at least another 50 record releases and each week there is a deluge of great art and music – either from myself or myself featuring vocalists or in other cases different artists that I’ve signed to my various labels.
T.H.E – What does the future hold for Glenn Morrison?
Glenn Morrison – We are working towards building an international club night with Fall From Grace Records that will showcase all of the artists on the label in amazing clubs and venues. The idea is to be more than a record label, so even with Dying Light Records or Ambient Wave we want to be doing vinyl releases for each release on ALL labels. These are the goals we are working towards currently. And with respect to my Glenn Morrison artist career – I will be releasing 3 albums this year – one will be related to my commercial pop work, one will be related to my underground techno and deep house / progressive house sensibilities, and the last will be related to my classical piano field recordings and live recordings.
New single ALL FOR YOU is released on the 29th May 2017! You can check out the preview here.
Follow Glenn Morrison, here.
