The Formant Soundsystem founder on a track that challenged everything he thought about music and its creation
The premise of One Track Mind is pretty simple: I ask artists to pick one track that means a lot to them – either something they’ve discovered recently, something that’s been with them for years, or one that reminds them of a specific time in their life or career – and tell me what makes it so special to them. I get to talk to the artists I love, and they get to talk about the artists they love. Love all round!
Grady Steele is producer, DJ and co-founder of the Formant Soundsystem, the travelling rig and party series that has become a fixture within more adventurous corners of London and Paris nightlife. Through Formant, Steele has spent years championing experimental electronics, dub-influenced sounds and forward-facing club music, helping cultivate spaces that sit somewhere between sound system culture, ambient listening and leftfield dance music. Alongside this, he began putting out his own productions through releases on Archaic Vaults in 2024, revealing a distinctly intimate approach that leans toward warmth, texture and emotional weight.
That sensibility carries through into Nausea, his new seven-track album for FELT. Built around themes of memory, emotional residue and post-rave introspection, the record unfolds through slow-moving melodic passages, field recordings and live instrumentation.
For his One Track Mind, Grady has selected a track from revered experimental music producer Sd Laika.
Grady Steele on Sd Laika – Peace
I found this question incredibly difficult as there’s so much music I love. There have been so many musical moments of discovery throughout my life that have directly influenced not only the way I think about music but also how I carry myself as a person and connect with the surrounding world, from the harmonic pushing and pulling of Maurice Ravel, to the lyricism and unquantifiable bass weight of Yabby You, to the call-and-response rhythms and immersive world-building of Source Direct.
I’ve chosen ‘Peace’ by Sd Laika because it challenged almost everything I previously thought about music and its creation. I was still holding onto the premise that melody, harmony and rhythm were the three fundamentals in any kind of music; without these, it would move out of music territory and into the realm of sound art and/or field recording. Sd Laika showed me that you can deconstruct these three pillars and still embody the essence of music. I realised you can have an incredibly moving motif that doesn’t consist of any melody but exclusively of texture, it can still carry the same functional weight and be equally emotive, if not more so, in the right context. Previously, I understood the importance of timbre and tonality, but Laika pushed this to a whole other level, where they didn’t need to be supporting actors but could be concerto soloists amongst the many moving parts behind them.
The reason I chose ‘Peace’ is because it’s the first track on the album and the beginning of this discovery; if the question were the album rather than the song, then I would have put the whole thing. To me, it sounds like music trying to escape itself, some sort of sonic dysphoria, morphing and mutating, not allowing itself to be defined or controlled by tempo or genre; it doesn’t sound like MIDI in a DAW, but a living organism escaping the bounds of theory and what music is understood to be. I have endless gratitude I wish I could express to Laika, and I truly wish he has found Peace.
Grady Steele – Nausea is out now on FELT
The Predatory Wasp 