CREATIVE MUSINGS | GARY SINCLAIR

We are supremely lucky to have met and worked alongside many creative and artfully talented people who have helped us shape and grow our brand. Just quietly, we just think they are fabulous.

Here with, a series of conversations with CREATIVES we love and admire... we talk about their passions and persuasions... and their desire to create and forge meaningful paths.

We hope their musings inspire you as much as they do the GINGER & SMART team...

Gary Sinclair, Tactile Music

Gary Sinclair from Tactile Music has been curating and directing our music for several years. From the playlists you hear in our boutiques, to the music on our runway shows and the beats at our events, Gary is the mastermind behind this crucial element of our brand essence… and we are grateful to him for continuing to inspire and move us through the art of music.

How did your passion for music start?

As far as I can remember I was always drawn to music. I grew up in Scotland, just south of Glasgow,  it's wet and cold, so you spend  a lot of time indoors listening to and playing music, its part of the cultural fabric! For me music became a world to escape to. I could always rely on Aretha Franklin, Neil Young, Sonic Youth, and Public Enemy, they were always there. I was a voracious listener and undiscerning of style or genre. I loved it all and I loved the sense of discovery, as long as it was authentic, real and different to what I knew. 

Tell us about your background as a recording artist?

Wow. That's a while ago, who told you? Ha ha. I thought those records were sealed. While studying sound engineering I started experimenting with composition and building a studio. If the music I wanted to hear didn't exist, then I had to make it. It was all very punk/indie DIY in its philosophy.

I started a project called Liminal which was a real collision of ideas and genres that somehow managed to work! Krautrock, techno, funk, hip hop, breakbeat, punk, electronic all mashed together to make a wonderful noise. It didn't make much sense on paper but people liked it. Liminal was a great project, super creative and fun, the album ‘aa’ was critically and commercially successful. We played some killer shows at amazing venues, good times indeed.

Unfortunately we split up and I moved to Sydney. Or I moved to Sydney and we split up. I can't quite remember.

One the singers and guitar players from Liminal moved here and we started a project called Abacus Roolz which was much softer and textural, ambient folk, pastoral electronic. We had a lot of critical success and had some music featured in films and TV.

Gary Sinclair, Tactile Music

How did you make the transition to composing and sound designing?

Aesthetically my compositions sit where music and sound design meet. In a way there was no real transition. I learned how to compose music from a sound engineering perspective, using drum machines, synthesisers and samplers to generate music. Professionally composing music for films, TV,  media etc sometimes comes hand in hand with doing the sound design.

What are some standout projects you have worked on?

Over the past few years I have worked more in the public art, education, science and experiential forums.

This year I started collaborating with the painter James McGrath.The collaboration is called Nature as Data. Our most recent work is multi-media artwork called Ghost trees. It's at the collision of art, science, technology and environment.

We utilise data, Lidar scans and eco acoustic recordings taken from endangered environments.

We explore, navigate and reprocess the data to provide an emotional connection to the scientific information. The work is ephemeral and like a memory of a disappearing landscape. Echoes of our lost environment.

A standout and a surprise was winning a composition award from the University of Vienna, Austria, for my composition “Freezing Gold Nanocluster”. It's the music articulation of a scientific process called nucleation, (nothing to do with bombs, I promise.)

This is very beautiful, strange, weird, geeky, science music, which I love and I am very proud of. I might release this on vinyl, if anyone is interested?

Image from multi media collaboration with artist James McGrath. Entitled “Ghost Trees”. By Nature as Data.

You have worked extensively in the fashion space. How do you think music contributes to the overall feel of a runway show?

A successful show is a sum of its parts, music is one of these parts. It has a direct influence on the emotion of the audience and therefore should be selected with careful consideration.

Very rarely do people hear music at that level while sitting still, so there is an amazing opportunity to present music that has depth ,interest and purpose. You have the audience's attention, don't waste it. My philosophy is the music should support the narrative of the show and embody the core inspiration for the collection.  The right soundtrack can enhance, support and  elevate the collection. 

The wrong soundtrack can take up too much of the attention, dictate the narrative or overpower the collection.

Our customers love the playlists you create for our boutiques. What are your key ingredients to curating a playlist?

The G&S customer is very music aware, the music in the boutiques should reflect this.

I try to keep it interesting, fresh and familiar, and also vary the genre, tempo and mood regularly. 

What is creativity to you? 

The generation of something new and original for altruistic reasons.

The end product can be satisfying and the reason you start something can be cathartic, however the act of creating music is the most rewarding, that's where the magic is.