Meet Julian Gray | Electronic Musician, Creative Director, Label Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Julian Gray and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Julian, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
In my opinion as both a musician, creative professional and artist mentor, the most important element of any brand, including my music project and various other ventures is the community surrounding it. Building your team, your people, your support system, whether that comes in the form of an audience, a management team, or a strong social circle is crucial to the success of a project.

I’m profoundly humbled nearly every day by the community that has manifested itself around my projects. People who are passionate about the things I love and the things I create, I’m eternally grateful for.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Music is a connection of the artist with his or her inspirations. We are ever-remixing the concepts and ideas that inspire us, reimagining things that we love in our own way.

When I work on music, design, video or anything creative I try to find things that can inspire the work. Often it’s music from my past, sometimes its things that catch my eye during my regular walks around my home here in Downtown LA, sometimes its things that pop into my head in the middle of the night that I have to jot down immediately as to not forget. These things are the pieces that make up the whole picture that is your project.

I think as a musician or any artist it’s important to allow this creative freedom into your life, to not settle into one genre or style and allow your creativity to guide you. For the most part I have allowed this idea to guide my life, and by proxy my music, which has resulted in a really diverse catalog of sounds. It isn’t always easy to tune out the noise of social media, label influence, your peers, and other distractions, but I believe that if you follow these principals your music will tell your story and have a uniqueness that only you can create.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I have a route I like to take my guests when they come to visit the city. it’s a bit of a walk but I think I’ve optimized it to hit many of the landmarks in DTLA in the most efficient way possible haha.

I always like to start out around the financial district on broadway, walk up and through grand central market, up angels flight railway, through bunker hill (a few museums like The BROAD if I have time), past The Walt Disney Concert Hall to The Music Center, then walk down Grand Park to City Hall. If I have time, we hit Olvera Street and Little Tokyo, and then end up back in the financial district.

This is my go-to route and I think it hits most of my favorite DTLA (my home and my favorite part of LA) landmarks.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I will have to dedicate my career to many artists and friends that inspired and empowered me in different stages of my life.

As a child, my father (a guitarist and recording artist himself) sat me on his lap, and shared the music of Pink Floyd, The Beatles, U2, Kraftwerk and more of his favorites from when he was younger. My mother (an 80s new-wave goth girl and first generation ‘raver’) always had the music of INXS, Depeche Mode, Billy Idol and Madonna playing in the house. The fusion of these very musical parents set me up for a lifetime love of music, and electronic music at that. My grandmother, worked at several ad agencies throughout her career, including The Times Harold and The Washington Post, was one of the first female production managers in the ad industry in Washington DC when it was taboo for a women to fulfill that role. She taught me that anything was possible and instilled my love for advertising and the marketing industry as a child.

When I was a young teenager, in the pre-streaming days, a friend burned me Daft Punk’s entire discography on bootleg CDs in middle school: I was obsessed. Another friend shared with me what he referred to as ‘dubstep’ and ‘techno’ (really electro house and hard dance) from a pirated folder of music his older brother downloaded and loaded on his mp3 player while we rode home on the school bus together. These friends inspired my lifelong love of EDM.

When I was an older teenager, my love for Daft Punk evolved into a love of what many consider to be my generation’s version: Deadmau5. I was a huge fan of the music of Deadmau5 and the community surrounding him and his label mau5trap. Some of my best friends to this day were born out of our involvement in his community. It was a life long dream of mine to get a release on his label, with first recognition starting at 17 years old, and playing back and forth with the A&R at the label for many years, at 20 years old got signed to the label by Deadmau5 himself. I owe a lot of my career success to this initial signing. I grew with the label for many years.

As an adult, I found love in my amazing partner Katy, who has helped me grow as a person and become the person I am today. I owe them the world. They have opened my eyes to possibilities and concepts that were so foreign to me before we met. I am constantly inspired by them and I owe them so much.

So many people have shaped who I am today, and I’m grateful for every one, even if I didn’t mention them by name. People are shaped by their community and I could not ask for a better one.

Website: http://juliangraymusic.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliangraymedia/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliangraymedia/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JulianGray

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/juliangray/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/juliangraymedia

Image Credits
Brian Rapaport www.instagram.com/brphoto.co