Sam Gellaitry’s ‘curious’ is a tribute to his younger self— and his greatest influencesAnywhere Here Is Perfect; the idiomatic, polite conclusion to a thousand hazy late-night taxi journeys — and an apt title for the debut full-length album of Scottish producer, DJ, singer and songwriter Sam Gellaitry, slated for release on 7 November via Major Recordings. ‘Always rejoice when you get to your destination in one piece,’ instructs the official messaging. ‘Anything can happen.’

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If the album’s first two singles are to go by, anything can indeed happen. CURIOUS is a certified dancefloor filler driven by no-holds-barred bass and haywire beat slicing, interspersed with vocals from both Gellaitry and the track’s featured artist, indie-pop crossover star Toro Y Moi. Its genesis is highly personal, however, traceable to some of its creator’s most formative influences and even to his very earliest days of making music on the family computer as a wide-eyed 12-year-old.
Gellaitry, who is set to share the stage this month with the likes of Justice, Kaytranada, and Madeon, is not one to sit still. His decision at the outset to work with vocals as a lead instrument was key to the formulation of CURIOUS, and who better to enlist than one of his greatest influences?
“I could actually tell you the exact date I heard Toro Y Moi for the first time, because it was on a TV show,” laughs the producer, “October 2010, and it was on Waterloo Road. I’ve been a fan since then. The more I listened to his stuff— as well as people like Tame Impala, James Blake, even Sampha— producing and singing became my main focus. He’s the big reason as to why I started singing. So having him as a feature is a really nice, full circle moment for me. A lot of my vocal style is inspired by his; we do actually have a similar tone at times. So I feel like having us on the same track, sonically it really meshes well.”
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Toro Y Moi was given free rein to write his own parts and send as much material as he pleased for Gellaitry to chop and piece together according to his own vision. The result might be vocally led, but for Gellaitry that vision begins invariably from the fundamentals of rhythm, which in this case came courtesy of the sounds of the Linndrum.
“I always start with the beat,” he explains. “All of my choices, including melodic choices, stem from the beat. The beat informs exactly the top line I’m going to go for. I used to do it with synthesisers: high, solo synths would be take on the melody that I’m now using my voice for. But nowadays, I’ll loop a beat and start doing mumble takes. I always feel like I’m uncovering a melody that’s already in the beat when I’m singing. And, when I’m done with the melody, it’s like I’m uncovering lyrics which are already in the melody! Sometimes, when you’re doing scratch takes, you’ll sing in a certain way, and the melody will lend itself to certain vowel sounds as well. It’s quite a subconscious experience!”
As for recording those vocals, Gellaitry’s go-to vocal signal chain might come as a surprise: “I recorded my vocals through a 1073 preamp, using an SM58 mic,” he explains, almost sheepishly. “It’s a weird one, using a cheap mic. I do have a [Neumann] U87 [condenser microphone], but the room I work in is not treated very much. So I just use the dynamic mic, which is actually better than the one that picks up every single corner of the room. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix that at one point… [laughs] but it’s fun. I just crank the EQ on the 1073 and I’m pretty much good to go!”
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It’s an unpretentious workflow that sits comfortably alongside Gellaitry’s choice of DAW: FL Studio. The highly accessible software has been a constant in the producer’s output since day one, and his fluency with it is clear. Aside from its lead vocal chain, all of CURIOUS was crafted in the box. “It feels like a deep thing to think about my relationship with that software,” Gellaitry reflects, “because it really just changed so much in my life, and I’ve been working with it for so long— 16 years! In fact, it’s probably been one of the most consistent things in my life! I just, kind of, lose myself when I’m on it.
“It was my brother who told me about it; I was 10 and he was remixing stuff with samples— Happy Hardcore kind of stuff— on our family laptop. He told me about this software you could actually make your own music on. To me, at that age, it just sounded like utopia. This couldn’t be a real thing! And that was FL Studio. It was a mystical place to me.”
FL Studio became the producer’s go-to DAW, playing a central role in one of Gellaitry’s most formative experiences as a young musician, when he unsolicitedly sent a demo to one of his heroes in the hopes of receiving some guidance. The undulating bass and deftly chopped rhythms of CURIOUS tips its hat more than a little to the locomotive rhythms of French house; most notably Daft Punk’s 2001 Discovery cut Face To Face and its featured vocalist and co-producer Todd Edwards. Edwards, explains Gellaitry, was the first person to ever provide him with direct feedback on a track.
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“I sent him the first song I ever wrote, when I was 12, on MySpace. I can’t remember exactly what he said… something like, it was good and it was on the right track. I mean, it was a very basic song. But to be fair, for my first song, it could have been worse! [laughs]. But it’s insane that he got back to me, because he’s always been a huge inspiration. In hindsight, I do think about how he must have felt, having some 12-year-old from Scotland message him on MySpace… must have been a bit weird, right? But the internet was a smaller place back then.
“To be honest, there aren’t many other songs in the French house genre that I know of which really sound like Face To Face. Which makes me really think it was Todd who had a huge influence on the production in that song. The chops are so small, it’s almost like you’re jumping into different rooms. CURIOUS is almost a homage to him.”
A near-homage it may be, but the track has its own fair share of in-the-box wizardry which is all of Gellaitry’s own; witness its blend of three different UVI Falcon-crafted bass sounds (“something I’ve not done ever, really”) or its harsh use of multi band compression on the mix bus to maintain a sense of space while squeezing certain frequency bands as far as they will tolerate (“even if I’m using vintage sounds for drums, it will still have a modern feel from the squash that I’m putting it through!”).

“A lot of unorthodox ways of doing things,” reflects Gellaitry, “But the older I get, the more I’m opening myself up to imperfections. The amount of times I’ve been too precious on a song, and it’s just never come out…!” As for the producer’s choice of plugins and instruments, one go-to developer is Swedish company Klevgrand. “They have a compressor that sounds great and is visually really clear. Just really helpful to have. And before anything else— they have a really clean noise reducer [Brusfri], which basically listens to and learns the sound, and then just cuts it out. Really clean. They have a really good de-esser as well [Esspresso]. All their stuff is really visually intuitive. It’s quite modern looking. It just makes sense. There’s nothing too shiny or glossy. Just a really good interface.”
Now that Anywhere Here Is Perfect is ready for release, what’s next for Gellaitry? “Knowing me, man, I’m probably going to do a ‘180’ from this sound I’m on,” laughs the producer. “Getting this album to the finish line, having it all in one sound, I can see myself going into a deep exploration of something completely different. It’ll be nice, being freed up a bit— maybe to work on other people’s stuff. But, mainly, I’m just going to enjoy the fact that it’s finished.”
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