Memorybell

Biography

Memorybell is the ambient project of Grant Hazard Outerbridge, a multi-instrumentalist and classically trained pianist who has been playing music for nearly 30 years. From 2003 to 2008, he played bass, keys, and occasionally sang in band The Very Hush Hush. Alternately called dream-pop, electro-pop, shoegaze and indie, TVHH released two albums, Mourir C’est Facile (2006) and Evil Milk (2008), and two EPs, Washing Songs (2003) and Sign Language (2004). They toured nationally and shared the stage with bands such as Okkervil River, Stereolab, and TV on the Radio. In 2010, under the name Grant Hazard, Outerbridge self-released Genus Euphony, a solo effort of classical piano infused with subtle electronics.

In February 2014, Outerbridge awoke in a hospital with no memory of how he had arrived. He was diagnosed with transient global amnesia, a condition that causes the brain to temporarily stop making new memories. When he returned to the piano, Outerbridge found his previous compositions sounded garish. He pared them down to their essence and, along with new, more spacious material, constructed a set of variegated and subtle songs that explore the interplay between dissonance and silence.

Grant lives with his wife and sons in Denver, CO.

News

• Memorybell “No Anchor” Out Now

  Hidden Shoal is excited to present No Anchor, the beautiful new album from Memorybell. The album is available on CD (ships mid-May) and in digital formats via Bandcamp, stream via Spotify and is also available from all good online stores. The music of Memorybell is available for licensing (film, tv, web etc) via Hidden Shoal.

  On No Anchor, Grant Hazard Outerbridge expands the scope of his ambient work, crafting three long-form drone pieces that together comprise nearly 80 minutes of music. The core sounds for the album were recorded in late 2019 while Outerbridge’s studio was under construction, then developed during the pandemic to incorporate complex signal processing and layers of his core instrument, the piano.

  No Anchor fades into view with the gently rushing ‘Beneath a Soft Clearing’, which evokes the feeling of travelling at speed while insulated from turbulence. The noise of the waking world encroaches more boldly in ‘Soon to Wake’, as surface static begins to crackle and hum. Then, on the monumental 42-minute title track, all terrestrial points of focus begin to fade, as a deep soundscape stretches to the horizon. The resulting album feels like a waking dream, a tactile, shimmering, gorgeously immersive experience.

  “Essential to anyone searching for an aural retreat from an over-compressed world of packaged sound… Highly recommended for fans of solo piano and intersected genres, where Brian Eno meets Satie.” – Headphone Commute on Obsolete

  Memorybell is the ambient project of Grant Hazard Outerbridge. From 2003 to 2008, he played bass, keys, and occasionally sang in the band The Very Hush Hush. In 2010, under the name Grant Hazard, Outerbridge self-released Genus Euphony, a solo effort of classical piano infused with subtle electronics. In February 2014, Outerbridge awoke in a hospital with no memory of how he had arrived. He was diagnosed with transient global amnesia. When he returned to the piano, Outerbridge found his previous compositions sounded garish, so he pared them down to their essence and, along with new, more spacious material, constructed the debut Memorybell release, Obsolete. This was followed in 2020 by Solace, a meditation on nature and stillness that prominently features modular synthesizer. No Anchor is his third Memorybell release.
  

  Hidden Shoal · Memorybell – Beneath A Soft Clearing
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• New Single from Forthcoming Memorybell Album

  Hidden Shoal is excited to present ‘Beneath a Soft Clearing’, the expansive first single from No Anchor, the third album by ambient artist Memorybell. The track is available to stream on Spotify and SoundCloud and is also accompanied by a live performance video as part of January Skies, an event hosted by the Colorado Modular Synth Society in February 2021. No Anchor will see release on the 7th of May 2021 through Hidden Shoal. The music of Memorybell is available for licensing through Hidden Shoal.

  On No Anchor, Grant Hazard Outerbridge expands the scope of his ambient work, crafting three long-form drone pieces that together comprise nearly 80 minutes of music. The core sounds for the album were recorded in late 2019 while Outerbridge’s studio was under construction, then developed during the pandemic to incorporate complex signal processing and layers of his core instrument, the piano.

  No Anchor fades into view with the gently rushing ‘Beneath a Soft Clearing’, which evokes the feeling of travelling at speed while insulated from turbulence. The noise of the waking world encroaches more boldly in ‘Soon to Wake’, as surface static begins to crackle and hum. Then, on the monumental 42-minute title track, all terrestrial points of focus begin to fade, as a deep soundscape stretches to the horizon. The resulting album feels like a waking dream, a tactile, shimmering, gorgeously immersive experience.

  “Essential to anyone searching for an aural retreat from an over-compressed world of packaged sound… Highly recommended for fans of solo piano and intersected genres, where Brian Eno meets Satie.” – Headphone Commute on Obsolete

  Memorybell is the ambient project of Grant Hazard Outerbridge. From 2003 to 2008, he played bass, keys, and occasionally sang in the band The Very Hush Hush. In 2010, under the name Grant Hazard, Outerbridge self-released Genus Euphony, a solo effort of classical piano infused with subtle electronics. In February 2014, Outerbridge awoke in a hospital with no memory of how he had arrived. He was diagnosed with transient global amnesia. When he returned to the piano, Outerbridge found his previous compositions sounded garish, so he pared them down to their essence and, along with new, more spacious material, constructed the debut Memorybell release, Obsolete. This was followed in 2020 by Solace, a meditation on nature and stillness that prominently features modular synthesizer. No Anchor is his third Memorybell release.
  

  Hidden Shoal · Memorybell – Beneath A Soft Clearing
  Continue reading →

• Memorybell ‘Day Glides After You’ Live Performance

  Check out this stunning live rendition of ‘Day Glides After You’ from the new Memorybell album Solace. Do yourself a favour and wrap yourself is this warm, 12 minute blanket of sound. You’ll thank us. The album is available to purchase on CD and in digital formats via Bandcamp, stream via Spotify and is also available from all good online stores.

  The music of Memorybell is available for licensing (film, tv, web etc) via Hidden Shoal.

   

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• Memorybell “Solace” Official Release – CD & Digital

  Hidden Shoal is proud present Solace, the sublime new album from Memorybell. The album is available to purchase on CD and in digital formats via Bandcamp, stream via Spotify and is also available from all good online stores. The first single from the album, ‘Sigh of Floes’, is available to stream on Spotify and it’s accompanying music video can be streamed in 4k on YouTube.

  Taking inspiration from moments of repose, Solace sees Memorybell expand upon the pockets of stillness introduced in Obsolete and enlarge them until one can become lost. Solace explores the kinds of natural phenomena that can calm an anxious mind, such as watching an orange sunrise over snow or sitting alone in a quiet forest. These moments of inspiration provide the core of each song, with a few seconds transformed into expansive meditations.

  The mechanics of creating the album mimic the ideas that inspired it. In late 2016, Outerbridge began building a modular synthesizer that became the source instrument, alongside piano. Notes are sustained and re-shaped into resonant tones effacing their initial impulses. Piano phrases bounce between filters and echo into themselves; arpeggiated strings become mist; one thought dissolves into many. This scattering of focus creates a blanket of sound, a feeling that there is nowhere to look but everywhere.

  The music of Memorybell is available for licensing (film, tv, web etc) via Hidden Shoal.
  

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• New Memorybell Single and Music Video

  We’re very excited to present ‘Sigh of Floes’, the stunning new single from the forthcoming Memorybell album Solace. The track is accompanied by a beautiful music video from Australian video artist and Hidden Shoal founder Cam Merton. ‘Sigh of Floes’ is available to stream on Spotify and the music video can be streamed in 4k on YouTube. Solace will see release through Hidden Shoal on the 2nd of October 2020.

  Taking inspiration from moments of repose, Solace sees Memorybell expand upon the pockets of stillness introduced in Obsolete and enlarge them until one can become lost. Solace explores the kinds of natural phenomena that can calm an anxious mind, such as watching an orange sunrise over snow or sitting alone in a quiet forest. These moments of inspiration provide the core of each song, with a few seconds transformed into expansive meditations.

  The mechanics of creating the album mimic the ideas that inspired it. In late 2016, Outerbridge began building a modular synthesizer that became the source instrument, alongside piano. Notes are sustained and re-shaped into resonant tones effacing their initial impulses. Piano phrases bounce between filters and echo into themselves; arpeggiated strings become mist; one thought dissolves into many. This scattering of focus creates a blanket of sound, a feeling that there is nowhere to look but everywhere.

  The music of Memorybell is available for licensing (film, tv, web etc) via Hidden Shoal.

   

  Continue reading →

• New Memorybell Track

  We’re excited to announce the release of a gorgeous new Memorybell track featured on a compilation from the Colorado Modular Synth Society. The album is available via Bandcamp as a ‘pay what you want.’ ‘Desire Line’ will appear on an LP that releases later this year on Hidden Shoal. In the meantime be sure to check out Memorybell’s stunning 2016 album Obsolete.

  Memorybell’s music is available for licensing for film, tv, web, games and beyond via Hidden Shoal. Check here for more info.

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• Hidden Shoal in Textura’s Ten Favourite Labels of 2018 List!

  Hidden Shoal is incredibly honoured to have been selected as one of Textura’s Ten Favourite Labels of 2018. Textura is, in our opinion, the premiere new music magazine and favourite of the label team for unearthing and exposing new and exciting new music. This is the second time Hidden Shoal has been selected in Textura’s best labels list and as always we are nestled against some other very special labels, all of who you should check out.

  Now for a very brief and unnecessary acceptance speech – we are nothing without our incredible roster of artists, who continually amaze, inspire and surprise us. Thank you all!

   

   

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• Eat Your Friends: A Hidden Shoal 10th Anniversary Compilation

  Hidden Shoal is excited to end the celebration of its 10th year of existence with the new compilation album Eat Your Friends, comprising remixes and covers of Hidden Shoal artists, by Hidden Shoal artists. This freely downloadable album not only showcases the wealth of original music released through Hidden Shoal, but also the creative ingenuity and deft musical touch of the remixers and cover artists.

  From searing solar-flared adaptations to delicately reconstructed covers, deep space jam reworkings, and shimmering ambient tapestries, Eat Your Friends reimagines the Hidden Shoal discography in new and beautiful ways, playing to all the strengths of the roster’s dizzying array of talent.

  Includes remixes and covers by: Antonymes, Arc Lab, Glanko, Wayne Harriss, Liminal Drifter, Makee, Chloe March, Markus Mehr, Erik Nilsson, REW<<, Slow Dancing Society, Tin Manzano, Willem Gator, and Zealous Chang  of music by: Arc Lab, Brother Earth, Cheekbone, City of Satellites, Medard Fischer, Gilded, Glanko & Daniel Bailey, Kryshe, Memorybell, Erik Nilsson, perth, Slow Dancing Society, Tangled Star, Umpire, and Zealous Chang.

  Eat Your Friends is available now as a free download via Bandcamp and is also streamable via SoundCloud. Listen and then throw yourself into the wormhole as you explore the originals and more work by the remixers and cover artists.  For all the filmmakers, games designers and others in need of engaging music, don’t forget that all tracks in our catalogue are available for licensing (film, tv, games, compilations etc).

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• Memorybell Interview & Live Performance on BFF.FM

  Check out this wonderful re-streamable interview with Grant Outerbridge (aka Memorybell) on the BFF.FM radio show Sounds In The Dark. Along with some fantastic insights into his process and approach you’ll get to hear stunning live renditions of tracks from his sublime 2016 album Obsolete.

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• The Spaces Between: An Interview with Memorybell

  On his debut album as Memorybell, Grant Hazard Outerbridge delivered an abject lesson in need versus want. Obsolete is more than a simple minimalist document, indeed it could be argued that Outerbridge’s deft touch and innate sense of time make each of its sparse notes laden with import. As if each successive strike of hammer on piano wire were the only thing in the world… until the next. So it’s no surprise that Outerbridge is as much a thinker as a “feeler” when it comes to his musical work. In this utterly engaging interview the lovely Wagner Hertzog sat down with the artist and covered everything from Marvin Gaye to transient global amnesia. A truly great read.

  Many thanks to Wagner and Grant for their time and efforts in making this happen.

  WH: You have been playing music for decades. Was the concept for Memorybell already in your mind before you started working on this music, or is it a more recent artistic project?

  GHO: Memorybell is a very recent project. I wanted to focus on ambient music following the release of Genus Euphony, but the way this album came into being was decidedly unplanned.

  I had been composing, shaping, and reshaping 20 or so songs but could never quite get them to feel the way I wanted them to. After I got out of the hospital, playing the songs was a uniquely unpleasant experience. They sounded awful to me and I had trouble remembering why I had written them in the first place. When a song felt wrong, I either threw it away completely, or focused exclusively on its essence (often just one or two chords) and explored that as granularly as I could.

  My close creative collaborator from The Very Hush Hush, Peter Bo Rappmund, had heard most of the songs in various stages of their composition. When I was able to play these new, post-amnesia versions for him he strongly urged me to release the record under a new name. The songs were so different from anything I’d ever recorded that it made sense that they be the start of a new project.

  WH: What are your main influences and sources of inspiration?

  GHO: It sounds odd, but a lot of my musical ideas come from mundane objects. There is a particularly pleasant sound that the metal vent in the roof of my house makes when it lightly rains outside. In my old neighborhood, there was an old row house whose laundry exhaust whistled beautifully whenever it was in use. I could listen to the sounds of an oscillating fan all day long.

  I enjoy sitting still and listening to the world, though it’s far too loud for me. This is one reason why I’m drawn to expansive silences. I draw an immense amount of inspiration and solace from the quiet that descends during a snowfall.

  Less esoteric and more to the point, I find the following works very influential (in no particular order):

  Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
  Air – Moon Safari
  Billy Holiday – Solitude
  Gas – Pop
  Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
  Stars of the Lid – The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid

  WH: You seem interested in exploring extreme minimalism in your music, creating a slow, surreal experience for the listener. How did you come to develop such a style?

  GHO: When I was studying classical music I was most attracted to dissonant passages. These “sour” notes and chords represented for me a warmer, more interesting way of approaching musical expression. I would sit for hours playing a single passage over and over, slow it down, and make subtle changes to it. As I grew older, I looked forward to this monastic repetition far more than completing whichever increasingly difficult piece of music I was learning.

  Starting in the early 2000s, I played bass in The Very Hush Hush. Like the piano, my method of approaching the bass has changed over the years but, even back then, I was more concerned with playing the most interesting note than playing the root. One well-placed note can heighten anticipation in ways little else can.

  My ears most want to hear what happens in the moments after a note is played before it dissolves into silence. That tension is powerful and shaping that tension is my primary concern.

  WH: In terms of your creative processes, are you driven by your technique, or do you let your emotions drive your composing and arranging? Or is it a combination of both?

  GHO: Emotion is the driving force behind my music.

  To my ears, technique is only as useful as one’s ability to use it to express emotion. Technique for its own sake does little for me.  It’s not that I don’t admire accomplished musicians, I do; I fully understand the time and dedication it takes to become an accomplished musician. But when technique becomes the focal point music becomes hollow. There is a whole spectrum of emotional experiences to be had while listening to music and feeling awe at someone’s ability is only one.

  When I compose a new song, I try to keep my mind blank. Turn off my brain. Focus on what I’m feeling and sensing. What do I hear? What do I smell? Taste? I often begin with my eyes closed and open them once something interesting has presented itself. From there, repetition and manipulation of time and silence. How best to amplify what I’m feeling in the moment? What is the simplest way to say what needs to be said?

  WH: Is there is a special place or time that you write music?

  GHO: There used to be, but now I’m restricted to when my toddler son is either asleep or out of the house. Otherwise, he’ll come bounding from wherever he is and start mashing the keys. Adorable and amazing, but not conducive to thoughtful creation. I’m lucky if I get an uninterrupted chunk of 20 minutes per day.

  Place is an interesting problem with the piano. You’re stuck wherever the piano is. My work around for this used to be scribbling ideas in a notebook, studying them when I couldn’t be at a piano, etc. Now, unless I’m particularly inspired and one of my 20-minute mini-sessions produces something more-or-less fully formed, I’ll hold a strong phrase in my mind for as long as I have to until I have time to explore it at the piano.

  This results in a kind of fermentation. The most emotive part of an idea tends to become stronger, while the less necessary, more ancillary bits float off. This won’t always be my song writing process but, considering my 2 year-old just had a baby brother, I don’t see it changing in the near future.

  WH: How do you work on individual songs? Do they keep evolving as you experiment with them over time, or do you find it quick and easy to finish each piece?

  GHO: It depends on the song. Many songs are vague and gauzy at the start and I have to sit with them for a while before they reveal themselves to me. I try not to force anything onto them, just wait for whatever emotion it was that drove me to sit down at the piano to come out. Sometimes this process is quick, other times it is glacial. It took 14 years for ‘Somnolent’ to become what it is.

  That’s an aberrant example, though. Most songs take on average 2-3 years before I finally leave them be. So, at any given time, the batch of songs I’m working on tend to have been initially conceived several years previous.

  Occasionally, a song will emerge and I can’t figure out how to improve it. Those are always happy moments, though infrequent. I quite enjoy the long, slow evolution of a song. When one is finished, it may sound quite unlike it did in its infancy.

  WH: In regards to your artistic process, are you a perfectionist, or more of a relaxed creator?

  GHO: A complete and utter perfectionist, though I’m trying to let that go. My compromise is to direct my perfectionist tendencies toward my process rather than toward my music, to stay dedicated to giving the songs room to breathe, to grow, to change. Rather than try to force the songs to be something I want them to be, I allow them to be what they are. Even if I don’t like the end result, being true to the process feels like being true to my nature.

  The most important part of my process is letting go. Ego can be a useful tool, in crafting personae, in pushing yourself, but I find it a barrier to making meaningful music. My best songwriting comes after I’ve processed whatever drove me to write a song in the first place. What remains after the dust settles.

  WH: Silence, and the ambiguity it evokes, plays an important role in your music. Is this aspect of your music planned, or do you improvise?

  GHO: Very much planned, as much as one can plan silence.  I can never predict the affect any given length of silence will have, so I conduct tests. Do I add a single beat here? A measure of seven? Thirteen? It’s a little like introducing oneself to a strange animal.

  As consumers of popular music our ears have been trained to expect predictability in regards to rhythm. 4/4 and 3/4 dominate the sonic landscape. The ghost of the Western classical music tradition is persistent. The purposeful shirking of predictable time signatures is a good thing but if not approached carefully it can estrange the casual listener.

  When I shape the silence in my songs, I pay close attention to what my ears want. Then I give them something else. Unusual time signatures often do the trick, but I try not to employ them for their own sake. Sometimes a standard time signature alternated with an irregular or changing amount of silence has a magical effect. The ultimate test is if someone can’t tell that a song is in 17/8 or 13/4.

  The ideal is to make the unexpected feel natural.

  WH: Can you tell us about your experience of transient global amnesia and how it influenced the creation of this album.

  GHO: In late February of 2014 my first son was two weeks old. He was curled up with my wife on the couch and I left to meet up with some friends. We had a couple of beers and I made my way home. It was lightly snowing.

  I walked in the house and my wife and son were still curled up on the couch. I took my son upstairs, swaddled him and put him in his crib, and put on my headphones.

  I woke up in a hospital roughly ten hours later on a gurney, obscenely bright fluorescent lights flashing over my face. I saw my wife and asked, “What am I doing here?” She patiently recounted the story of how I had come into our bedroom saying I couldn’t remember where I had been, what I had done, the people I had been with; how she had called the police, to whom I had apparently been quite charming and funny, who in turn summoned an ambulance that brought me to the hospital.

  My poor wife told me this story over forty times before it stuck. Tests were run; EKGs, MRIs, CAT scans, toxicology screens. At one point, a group of medical students with clipboards surrounded my bed.

  Throughout it all, my wife sat holding our absurdly small son wondering if I’d had some sort of stroke.

  I was diagnosed with Transient Global Amnesia, which is, maddeningly, a diagnosis by exclusion. Once everything else has been ruled out, that’s what you get, a rare condition about which little is known. Extreme stress, sleep deprivation, and excessive physical exertion are thought to be the triggers.

  The effect was as if a bomb had gone off in my brain. All memories months into the past and future were turned to glass.

  The tests showed an increased sensitivity to light and sound. This proved problematic with a small baby at the house. I was given to carrying earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones with me for diaper changes. Going outside without sunglasses triggered a migraine. A screaming police siren triggered a migraine. A teakettle triggered a migraine. A loud sneeze triggered a migraine.

  I quit my job. The thought of trudging through that soulless routine coupled with my new condition caused me so much anxiety I couldn’t function.

  I was home all the time. When my son was sleeping, I had to do something. When my son was at day care, I had to do something. When I couldn’t sleep, I had to do something. I turned to the piano.

  The songs I had been working on for the previous few years sounded like boxes of broken glass. Some of them literally gave me headaches. To heal, I picked them apart, focused on the parts that were soothing, that felt right, and threw out what remained. I reshaped them, let them ring out into silence, and created something new.

  WH: Did you know beforehand that you were writing songs specifically for this album, or did you choose from songs that had already been written?

  GHO: I chose from songs I had previously written, but completely altered them, post-amnesia. I had a concept for an album I had been pursuing before I awoke in the hospital. That’s the raw material to which I returned

  At the time, it was important to me to force the issue, to make the collection of songs work even if they felt wrong. That’s when I really started focusing on silence. I threw out the superfluous, ornamental bits and chiseled the songs to their core. Then I wrapped them in silence.

  WH: The title of the album, Obsolete, is very evocative. How did you settle on this title, and what does it mean to you?

  GHO: I really don’t like titling my own songs. When I do, they’re almost always non-sequiturs. I reached out to an old friend, gave him the raw, un-mastered tracks and asked him to title the songs. He suggested the title track be named “Requiem for Obsolete Technology.” A great song name, to be sure, but I felt single word song titles were more apropos, given my editing method and interest in silence.

  In general, I often feel like I was born a couple hundred years too late. The world is the loudest it has ever been, and for someone who craves quiet it is a struggle to remain focused amongst the head-splitting sounds of squealing brakes, screaming people, crackling electric lines, and wailing sirens. I like to imagine what the world must have sounded like before the industrial revolution.

  Actually finding a quiet place is becoming more difficult. I live in Denver, Colorado and the legalization of marijuana, along with our city’s policy of being as inviting as possible for new businesses, has created an immense influx of people. City streets are jammed beyond capacity, and what used to be an easy drive into the mountains has become an arduous chore. Hiking trails are as clogged as motorways. Landmarks are being vandalized.

  Quiet places are vanishing. So I create them in music.

  WH: Did you work on the songs for Obsolete individually or collectively? The titles of the songs suggest a link between them.

  GHO: The songs I ended up including on Obsolete were originally written at completely different times. The only thing they had in common was the fact they were the ones I had been drawn to in the years and months leading up to my amnesia. When I slowed them down and picked them apart after my return from the hospital, I noticed new patterns and arranged their order on the album accordingly. I rarely worked on one song at a time. I typically shaped the whole set of songs at once. If I made a severe edit on one, it often let to a complementary edit on another.

  I touched on this earlier, but I find naming my own songs difficult. My natural inclination is to be abstract and sarcastic with names, but I felt it would be a disservice to the honest and existential nature of these songs to name them so. The titles of the songs are representative of various themes that were woven through my life when I reworked them. Koan is inspired by the Richard Brautigan poem, “Karma Repair Kit, Parts 1-4.” Ambulator is in reference to the Max Frisch novel, Man in the Holocene.

  Both of these speak to me on a level that is difficult to articulate. “Karma Repair Kit” is a reminder to be still and accepting. Not of anything in particular, but of everything in general. Man in the Holocene is a meditation on loneliness and struck a note within me during my recovery, despite the fact I read it a very long time ago; it just bubbled up out of my mind.

  The other song titles are fairly literal and loosely based on my friend’s suggestions. 2014 was unequivocally the worst year of my life. The amnesia wasn’t even the most difficult struggle, but I’m not going to elaborate. The songs are my way of processing what happened.

  WH: What’s the main intent behind your music? What are you trying to communicate to your listeners?

  GHO: That sitting still, especially when it is uncomfortable, is important; that the act of listening, whether it’s active or passive, is important. It slows down your thoughts, so you can spend time with them. Depending on your type of mind or life situation, that may not be desirable, but then it is all the more impactful.

  Modern city life is fast and loud. We run around from place to place, from work to home, from the gym to the grocery store, checking our watches or phones, making sure we don’t miss appointments; little of that matters to our internal lives. We focus so intently on what we have to do that we rarely stop to think what we would like to do. Or what we should do, not only for our own happiness but also for our own mental health.

  Slow down and take a nap. Memorybell can help.

  WH: Do you have a lot of unreleased songs?

  GHO: I rarely make a proper recording until I’m satisfied that I have a cohesive collection of songs. I have a few songs that didn’t make the cut for Obsolete, but if I do anything with them, I’ll probably chop them up and use parts of them in another project. I’ve reworked one song that didn’t fit the way I wished it had for Obsolete and will most likely include it on the next record.

  I don’t have a lot of unreleased material but I do, however, have a lot of unrecorded material. I don’t write any musical ideas down, I just run the songs through my head over and over. I have several albums worth of songs in various stages of completion floating in my brain. Sometimes I’ll carry a song around for years before I return to it. One song I’ve been working on for 19 years and it still hasn’t fully revealed its mysteries to me. My approach is that if something is worth recording, I’ll remember it. Thankfully, the part of my brain that stores my musical ideas seems largely unaffected by my amnesia.

  WH: Are you currently working on something? What can we expect next from Memorybell?

  GHO: I’ve had my fill of reworking old material for the moment. I’m moving forward with my new approach and writing an album from scratch. It’s very freeing, and my process has quickened; I’ve let go of thinking of any given idea as precious, as worthy of meticulous appreciation. If something doesn’t feel right, it’s gone. If some essence of it sticks around, then it has merit and will find a place in some different form. It’s a looser and faster method than I’ve ever used before. I’m halfway done with the follow-up to Obsolete. The songs still breathe slowly and are still melodic, but it’s somehow…different.

  My main obstacle is lack of time. I have a 2 year-old and a newborn at home (both boys) and, unlike when I wrote Obsolete, I am now gainfully employed. My time to write is limited to naptime, or those rare occasions when I’m home alone. I’m finding it helps, actually. I carry around the songs in my head, tweak them, try different arrangements, and then when I finally have the time to play them and test my ideas out, the good ideas tend to present themselves more or less immediately.

  Whatever comes next will be looser and more organic.

  —

  Memorybell’s debut album Obsolete is available now through Hidden Shoal. Head to the artist’s profile for all links and more info.

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Reviews

• Memorybell “No Anchor” Reviewed at Echoes and Dust

  “I’ve never heard anything by Memorybell or the music of the artist behind the sobriquet, Grant Hazard Outerbridge, but as soon as I saw the cover art and read that it was piano-centered ambient music, I got the sense that I would enjoy No Anchor immensely. The album is compromised of three long-form pieces, with the title track doubling up in length to expand over 40-minutes.

  ‘Beneath A Soft Clearing’ opens the album with warm, contemplative pads secreting opiate mountains of sedation to battered hungover brains and overworked eyes. Each intermittent piano key stroke, a sunbeam cascading onto an otherwise dismal day. Ambient music is like a balm or a dressing on the acid burn of capitalism; almost anyone can seemingly do it. But, it has an almost divine, transgressive grace to it. It’s a genre of narcotic reprieve, and whilst it means that very few artist’s sit atop the pile as the ultimate high, the vast majority of ambient artists, I tend to enjoy and this is no placebo. This first fifteen minutes of couch-slump, post-dopamine surge tranquillisation is as effective as any other great ambient/drone work in its ability to take the overwhelming chaos of existence and slow it down into gentle manageable waves of time, space, emotion and expectation.

  The serenity carries over into the sophomore track, ’Soon To Wake’; a track reaching out with tape hiss arms and crackled embracing intentions. These delicate oscillations of noise, like shampoo slowly dissolving between ears and bathwater amidst ovarian peace and comfort. The true beauty of this music is its ability to lure the listener deep into the cosmos of introspection. Its composition is rudimentary, but its production is well-polished and its emotional efficacy casts a tall shadow over the vast majority of releases we’re submitted day-to-day.

  I could say that this album just requires the patience to enjoy it, but I am extremely impatient and this album when I gave it my time rewarded with me clarity of thought, allocated space to set everything else aside and a journey out of this world into my own subconscious. Sometimes you have to remember that nothing really matters, everything we know is a societal construction or a humanisation of sciences beyond comprehension and we are all free, even when we choose to bow and conform and sink into the sand box lifestyle of salaryman capitalism. At any point, you could run off into the woods and start again, all on your own willpower. At any point, you could abuse the system, swelter in a haze of addictions and barbarise your mind into a paste of ignorance. At any point, you could follow your dream, take a leap of faith, stop saying what if and begin saying what next? All it takes is one deep repine into the wilderness of your thoughts.

  I like to imagine that ‘No Anchor’ is quite aware of how far away and interconnected with the album the listener is at this point. After half an hour of meditative listening, it’s quite safe to assume that most people will likely be thinking about other things. Each person on a rudderless journey into an almost medicated state, no anchor for direction, always moving, changing, ascending, transforming. The track becomes almost like time itself; a vast river where you place your hand in and never touch the same water for a second. Each part droplet of the river is its own unique piece making a greater whole. This track is repetitive, but each swirling pad is informed by its predecessor. We don’t experience it the same because it rides the momentum of each of its formers. None of these pad strokes are the same. They inhabit the same space, but have different contexts and intentions and from one end to the other they evolve the track like slow falling dominoes. Seemingly its all the same but, every little thing pushes a little differently.

  No Anchor is an excellent ambient/drone album that I’d highly recommend to fans of the genre and psychonauts alike.”

  – Echoes and Dust

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• Memorybell Interview at Westword

  After Grant Hazard Outerbridge released his 2016 debut ambient piano album, Obsolete, under the moniker Memorybell, he started going down the modular-synth rabbit hole. Modules can vary from altering frequency, amplitude and spectrum to dynamic control and voltage, giving a musician a wider set of sonic possibilities.

  It took the classically trained pianist about two years to find his bearings and work in the modular-synth environment. He equates experimenting with the synths — turning knobs, mangling, altering and smearing sounds — to being a mad scientist. Notes can be sustained or reshaped into resonant impulses, while piano phrases can be bounced between filters and echo into themselves.

  “It’s like building with Legos, but then you get to listen to your results in addition to looking at it,” he says. It was really intimidating, but it was also super-fascinating and fulfilling. I couldn’t literally not think of something further away from playing the piano. And that’s what I wanted, you know, to force myself to grow as an artist and be able to communicate more complex, interesting ideas.”

  Not long after getting a handle on modular synths, Outerbridge stumbled across Freq Boutique, a monthly open-mic night at Fort Greene, hosted by WMD, the Denver-based Eurorack modular-synth and guitar-pedal company.

  Outerbridge became a regular at Freq Boutique and eventually joined the Colorado Modular Synth Society, playing newer ambient compositions that he’d been working on, some of which hushed the crowd.

  “There were songs where people were dead silent while I was playing,” he says. “That a really crowded bar just goes totally quiet, it’s a feeling that sends shivers down my spine. It’s like literally everybody is stopping and paying attention. There must be something in this song that’s worth keeping.”

  Outerbridge took seven songs that prompted that kind of response and recorded them for the new album, Solace, which drops on October 2 on the Australian label Hidden Shoal. Many of those songs for the album were written in 2018, when he was busy and stressed, spending six hours a day scoring film projects. During his downtime, he worked on his own material as a way to stay sane during that time, thinking, “What are some of these calming thoughts that can ease your mind or make your anxious mind feel calmer and at peace?”

  “We still need to find a way to feel centered and human and not like just crazy, insane people reacting to every little thing that happens, which is how I personally was feeling about everything,” Outerbridge says.

  While most of Solace was recorded using his modular synthesizer, “Sigh of Floes” is a piano-based song that starts in the neoclassical vein and gradually morphs into the ambient realm as echoes start to swell and smear sounds together. Hidden Shoal founder Cam Merton shot the video for the song.

  The cover of Solace is a photo of the crumbled remains of a hotel that was built in the 1800s. Not long after COVID-19 lockdowns started in mid-March, Outerbridge and his family rented a secluded cabin near a hot spring between Gunnison and Crested Butte.

  “There’s just something about that shot that just really resonated with me,” he says. “It’s crumbling. It’s falling apart. People used to come here 100 years ago in the early 1900s, during the last pandemic, to try and heal and unwind. And then here we are, years later, and I’m staring at the crumbling version of what came before that. It just really sat with me and really affected me.”

  While Outerbridge says he’s never been so musically productive as during the pandemic, noting that he’s got about three albums’ worth of material recorded, he’s also offering his mixing and mastering services to other musicians who have been using the past six months to make music.

  “I think the pandemic forced a lot of people to re-examine what’s most important to them,” he says, “with no endpoint definitively in sight. It’s been crazy to me how much amazing, good, interesting and evocative emotional content I get exposed to in my musical circles by people that obviously have always had it in them.”

  – Westword (interview by Joe Solomon)

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• Memorybell ‘Sigh of Floes’ Reviewed at Rural Sounds

  “Memorybell shares with us his latest single, ‘Sigh of Floes” from his upcoming release, Solace which will be released on october 2nd. The song has a glacial like feeling to it – everything moves into itself at the right moment in time, creating a reflective and introspective piece to get lost within.

  Taking inspiration from moments of repose, Solace sees Memorybell expand upon the pockets of stillness introduced in Obsolete and enlarge them until one can become lost. Solace explores the kinds of natural phenomena that can calm an anxious mind, such as watching an orange sunrise over snow or sitting alone in a quiet forest. These moments of inspiration provide the core of each song, with a few seconds transformed into expansive meditations.”

  – Rural Sounds

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• “Eat Your Friends” Compilation Reviewed at DOA

  “Over almost a decade, Hidden Shoal records developed a reputation as a consistently innovative and experimental music label, giving to us music of remarkable qualities whether it was the instrumental excursions of Gilded, the blissed-out indie of My Majestic Star, the electronica of Marcus Mehr, the alt.folk stylings of Kramies – the HSR list of significant talents was a lengthy one. I say was, as in 2014 or thereabouts, the Hidden Shoal label underwent a reorganisation of sorts, and it began to seem that one of the more influential Australian record labels of the recent past was itself going into hiding. Perhaps so, although only to return refreshed, renewed, invigorated and with its varying artistic visions intact – the Eat Your Friends compilation proves that the Hidden Shoal label is properly with us again.

  One thing I’ve found when reviewing compilations is that not infrequently, when I put them into my music players, the tracks separate instead of remaining in their album folder, and that has happened with my copy of Eat Your Friends, encouraging me to view each of the tracks as a single release rather than view the album itself as a cohesive whole. Then there’s the fact that only some of its contributors are already known to me and so, ditching some of my preconceptions about what it’s going to sound like, I began listening to the 11 tracks in a random sequence, and prepared for the unexpected.

  Firstly, there’s singer/songwriter Erik Nilsson’s “Moksha Can Wait”, a song which electronic composer Marcus Mehr has taken and adapted to his subtly developed production sound, a track that begins almost inaudibly and builds to a staggering crescendo of soaring, roaring electronic sound and with Nilsson’s guitar and piano providing a counterpoint to Mehr’s swirling atmospherics. The ambient chill of City Of Satellites is given an added gloss by Tim Manzano, although I’m not so sure what he’s actually done with the track – it does sound a lot like the City Of Satellites I know from their Machine Is My Animal album, although as the track progresses and the rhythm and bass begin to disintegrate into a dubby conclusion it seems more apparent where Manzano has left his mark. Arc Lab’s “Through The Burning Glass” is remixed by Glanko, beginning with a club-level bassline before levelling into a noir tinged synth epic. And just when you thought the tracks on Eat Your Friends were entirely instrumentals, Rew perform a cover version of Umpire’s “Green Light District” and they do it with a vocal, alongside the strings and crashing cymbals and haltingly uncertain rhythms, a highlight of an album each of whose tracks is in one or another way remarkable.”

  – DOA

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• Memorybell’s “Obsolete” Reviewed at Headphone Commute

  “It’s been a while since I’ve visited the archives of Australian Hidden Shoal label. And, as usual with any label taking curation seriously, it’s easy to pick up the catalog and return to where one’s left off. This time, the imprint releases an album by a classically trained pianist, Grant Hazard Outerbridge, a 40-minute exploration of minimalism, caught in between the ringing out notes. It is this nearly simplistic study of reductionist pianism that has me interested in listening to Obsolete over and over again – after all, I’ve been creating such pieces myself.

  Delicate keys are at the forefront of each short vignette. In fact, it is only the keys that one hears, plus the ambient sounds of the player picked up by the microphones. Perhaps what one must listen to is not the chords, but the space between the chords, where the percussive instruments changes to a nearly resonating stretch of sound, left slowly to decay into the silence and the void. It’s like a moment between thoughts, when one finds clarity for the first time, as dust of all the daily noise finally settles down before it’s shaken up again. The solo piano recording becomes an indispensable accompaniment to the morning meditation, a soundtrack to solitude and score for introspection. And Obsolete comes with a story:

  “In February 2014, Outerbridge awoke in a hospital with no memory of how he had arrived. He was diagnosed with transient global amnesia, a condition that causes the brain to temporarily stop making new memories. When he returned to the piano, Outerbridge found his previous compositions sounded garish. He pared them down to their essence and, along with new, more spacious material, constructed a set of variegated and subtle songs that explore the interplay between dissonance and silence.”

  This acoustic ambiance is essential to anyone searching for an aural retreat from an over-compressed world of packaged sound. Like music for the airports, designed to calm and soothe the nervous soul, Obsolete blankets the mind with nominal sounds, leaving the heart to fill out the rest. [Don’t let the cover of the album turn you away!] Dig deeper through Outerbridge’s catalog, and you shall find another album, Genus Euphony, released in 2010. Highly recommended for fans of solo piano and intersected genres, where Brian Eno meets Satie.”

  – Headphone Commute

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• Memorybell “Obsolete” Reviewed at Music Won’t Save You

  [Translated from the original Italian via Google.]

  “An old piano and two microphones: it is enough, now, for musicians to navigate and young experimenters to create rich sound environments of a variety of different suggestions. In the case of Grant Hazard Outerbridge the concrete elaboration of the formula came to the valley of a thirty-year career and after an episode of transient amnesia, that moved him to reconsider his process of composition in an extremely minimal sense.

  From what has taken shape the Memorybell project, alias under which the artist Colorado presents eight tracks of “Obsolete”, populated by resonant harmonies narcoleptic in a muffled and dusty space, which embody a well hauntologia piano bare-bones.”

  – Music Won’t Save You

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• Memorybell “Obsolete” Reviewed at Tomatrax

  “This is the debut album from Memorybell, the ambient project of Grant Hazard Outerbridge. The album was recorded live in a single sitting using just a creaky grand piano and two microphones, and focuses on the silence between the musical notes as much as the notes themselves.

  This is quite an unusual album that takes experimentation to a new extreme. The music is all about feelings and atmosphere and makes use of the “empty” spaces in the sound as well as the sounds. With nothing but a piano, and only a few simple notes played at any one time, this album is as minimalist as it gets but somehow the spaced out simple notes work to create a dark but intriguing soundscape. This is very much an album for the ambient music lovers out there, if you need to hear tunes and activity this might not be for you.

  The album opens with the two minute and very minimalist Koan. Moving slowly with one key played at a time it sets the dark scene of the album. ‘Doldrums’ sees the activity begun to build, if only in a glacial sense. The song consists of short and slow groups of notes, allowing the feeling of both the sounds and the silence to come through and be felt. ‘Ambulator’ takes things down a notch, with simple repetitive notes slowly working their way through.

  ‘Somnolent’ sees the lower keys getting a workout to create a deeper and darker sound. The title track is perhaps the most active track on the record, with the notes coming together and the silences closing in a melody starts to emerge. ‘Entropy’ sees the gaps almost disappear with a slow tune rolling along. The closing track, ‘Dust’, takes things back to the minimalist sound with a simple low key being played between chunks of silence.
  It has to be said that this is an extremely experimental and unconventional record. As a result there are many listeners to whom this will not be accessible. However if you are a fan of ambient and minimalist music there is something quite beautiful to be found here.”

  – Tomatrax

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• Memorybell “Obsolete” Reviewed at Exclaim!

  “While much has been made about Jean-Michel Blais’ excellent solo piano debut on Arts & Crafts this year, another equally captivating record has unduly received far less attention. Grant Hazard Outerbridge’s debut as Memorybell is ambient minimalist piano that is much less involved than Blais’ — in fact, Blais’ lovely album sounds positively baroque next to Memorybell’s effortless calm.

  For over a decade, Outerbridge has been a touring indie musician and classical composer, but in 2014, he was diagnosed with transient global amnesia, a condition that causes the brain to temporarily stop making new memories. His old compositions sounded “garish” to him, so he began work on much more sparse, gossamer compositions using one creaky piano and two microphones.

  Memorybell channels the wandering and simplicity-loving spirits of Erik Satie, Brian Eno and William Basinski using short figures with so much space between each phrase that you almost forget the notes before were played. Outerbridge will play a few notes, then let them hang in emptiness for a few whole seconds before continuing the melodic idea.

  While it’s an interesting way to play with musical memory, this much silence requires a lot of patience, or a willingness to let one’s focus drift. Fans of Eno or Grouper will be pleased with another addition to their playlists for meditation, studying or falling asleep. Some may find the lack of memorable tune or beat frustrating, but those with the right inclination will appreciate the contemplative spaces between notes.”

  – Exclaim!

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• Memorybell “Obsolete” Reviewed at Turtle Tempo

  “What if we told you a person woke up in a hospital with absolutely no recollection of his arrival there is on his way to becoming a sensation? Okay, how about this: a person diagnosed with transient global amnesia, a condition causing sudden memory loss and the person to lose the ability to form new memories and recall recent events, is dedicating his time to creating the most beautiful ambient tracks you will ever hear.

  Sounds too good to be true? See for yourself.

  Grant Hazard Outerbridge has created this project under the name “Memorybell“, releasing his album “Obsolete“. His music will be able to instill feelings and deep emotions in you that you weren’t expecting. It’s so incredible to see that such beautiful art can be created using only a grand piano. Memorybell’s minimalist ambience makes you appreciate the silence in every pause to allow you the chance to absorb the intense feeling in his sound.”

  – Turtle Tempo

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• Memorybell “Obsolete” Reviewed at Anthem

  “Memorybell is the ambient project of Grant Hazard Outerbridge, a multi-instrumentalist and classically trained pianist who has been playing music for nearly three decades. From 2003 to 2008, he played bass, keys, and occasionally sang in band The Very Hush Hush, who toured nationally and shared the stage with bands such as Okkervil River, Stereolab, and TV on the Radio. In 2010, under the name Grant Hazard, Outerbridge self-released ‘Genus Euphony’, a solo effort of classical piano infused with subtle electronics.

  In February 2014, Outerbridge awoke in a hospital with no memory of how he had arrived. He was diagnosed with transient global amnesia, a condition that causes the brain to temporarily stop making new memories. When he returned to the piano, Outerbridge found his previous compositions sounded garish. He pared them down to their essence and, along with new, more spacious material, constructed a set of variegated and subtle songs that explore the interplay between dissonance and silence.

  Carrying his newfound sound forward, Outerbridge adopted the new moniker of Memorybell, creating a new musical project that explores the emotional and environmental possibilities of ambient music, creating pieces that are simultaneously cinematic and intimate, evoking solitude and yearning, affliction and recovery.

  After landing in the hands of Hidden Shoal, an Australia-based independent music label, Outerbridge put in motion his new album ‘Obsolete’, an ambient recording of immense potential. Recorded live in a single sitting using only a creaky grand piano and two microphones, ‘Obsolete’ holds a rare, solitary sound and lingering brilliance that most ambient pieces can only dream of.

  It’s spacious, with songs often composed of just a few hallowed notes, but what Outerbridge creates from the silence between is astonishing. Deeply affecting and instantly captivating, the album captures Outerbridge’s world in vivid sound and tantalising composition. 8/10”

  – Anthem Reviews

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Memorybell’s music is  available for licensing (master & sync cleared) through Hidden Shoal. Please contact us with some basic details about your project and the track(s) you wish to use and we’ll be sure to get back to you straight away.