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Last Of The Beats is Gray's second official album release, with beats and sounds from 1980s downtown New York to somewhere into the future. Founded in 1979 by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gray was at the cutting edge of conceptual, avangarde music, noise and sound making. Inspired by John Cage, Stockhausen and The Velvet Underground, with their new album, "Last Of The Beats," Gray continues to push the boundaries of beauty and transcendence in music and art.

Gray's Last Of The Beats is also loaded with exciting collaborations by former collaborators, including King Britt and Deantoni Parks, and adds new names to this list, including U.K. producer James Lavelle of Mo'Wax and UNKLE fame (who has done a re-mix of Gray's Dan Asher which should be a electronic dance hit in 2024), legendary dance music producer Arthur Baker, Spike Lee actor Roger Guenvuer Smith, famed Tubes drummer Prairie Prince and writer/Warhol & GQ publisher Glenn O'Brien.

The album covers a broad range of topics and styles, from avant-garde to electronic dance vibes, and will satisfy and inspire past fans of our cutting edge music and art, as well as reach out to a newer audience of hip hop and spoken word enthusiasts.

The design/artwork for the album's cover is a photograph of a noise-generating piece of kinetic sculpture that Jean-Michel Basquiat actually played, when Gray performed for famed art gallerist Leo Castelli's 78th birthday party, back in 1980, in New York City.

Gray released its first album in 2010 called Shades Of... and the special re-mix version of the album (a 3 disc compilation) called Shades Of... Anthology, released in 2019, contained re-mixed tracks by music industry luminaries such as Todd Rundgren, Hank Shocklee (of Public Enemy fame), Deantoni Parks (John Cale's current drummer) and King Britt (of Digable Planets). Incidentally, Shades Of... Anthology was released on RSD 2019!

Track Listing

Sales Points

• Gray was founded by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1979
• Features collaborations with King Britt, Deantoni Parks, U.K. producer James Lavelle (Mo’Wax and UNKLE), legendary dance music producer Arthur Baker, Spike Lee actor Roger Guenvuer Smith, famed Tubes drummer Prairie Prince and writer/Warhol & GQ publisher

Press Quotes

Gray is the carefully curated composition of a community, the common sound of disparate voices, the mix of the melting pot, the noise of incompatible agreements. Pastiche and pluralism, it's a collage cut up and still bleeding, the angry graffiti on a wall of sound, the melodies that linger like a sweet aftertaste of lazy pleasures, the battle cry of the vanquished sounded in the survivors' silence, the dance of the reckless to the tempo of an impending disaster, the tone of resistance in a note of rebellion, the voices of visionaries talking over, and under, the din of time's cruel march, correspondences rich and textured in a lost chord yet to be fully decoded. The references are dizzying, disorienting and defiant to the reductions of genre, chaotic and unruly dissonance given rhyme and reason, blues with a beat, art with a purpose, lyrics that bruise, the sound of repercussion struck with a vengeance. This music is so stone cold cool it's hot to the touch; deep downtown and dirty like a lethal seduction, a collective memory that needs no introduction.

     —Carlo McCormick, album liner notes