Grant Gronewold is a 29-year-old musician and visual artist from Melbourne. Grant’s story is as follows: He grew up sick and poor in America, a terrible place to grow up sick and poor. In 1998, Grant, his little brother and his mother fled to Australia with what little money they had. Eight years later, he dropped out of high school to make music and art, and he’s been doing it ever since.
The brutality of the American healthcare system left Grant and his family robbed of time, money, and health. Now, governments worldwide are attempting to create structures that will make healthcare even harder to access. Grant’s life expectancy is 35 years of age. On his latest album Chrome Halo, Grant is still fighting. He’s got five years left, he’s pissed off, and now he’s gonna talk his shit.
Grant’s illness informs his visual practise, his music, and his entire worldview. Chrome Halo is about disability, and the way that any body that’s deemed ‘unhealthy’ is systematically denigrated and disrespected. It is Grant looking that system in the eye and daring it to beat him down.
Chrome Halo is the product of turbulence in both Grant’s life and the world at large. As he gets older, Grant’s illness gets worse, his quality of life continually deteriorating, rendering him more and more isolated from the world.
The album is, on occasion, shatteringly bleak, but more than anything, Chrome Halo is about love. Grant doesn’t have much time left, and this record finds him trying to temper the anger in his heart with love.
The album, produced with field recordings from hospital stays and vocal samples and very little fancy equipment, sounds like the inside of Grant’s own mind – sometimes terrifying, often bleak, always beautiful. And while the record features a strong cast of collaborators – Grant’s LOSSLESS partner Oscar Key Sung, Becky Sui Zhen, Marcus Whale, Banoffee and Felicity Yang – Chrome Halo is Grant’s album through and through, a powerful and personal manifesto that couldn’t be delivered by anyone else.
Words: Wondercore Island/Good Manners
The brutality of the American healthcare system left Grant and his family robbed of time, money, and health. Now, governments worldwide are attempting to create structures that will make healthcare even harder to access. Grant’s life expectancy is 35 years of age. On his latest album Chrome Halo, Grant is still fighting. He’s got five years left, he’s pissed off, and now he’s gonna talk his shit.
Grant’s illness informs his visual practise, his music, and his entire worldview. Chrome Halo is about disability, and the way that any body that’s deemed ‘unhealthy’ is systematically denigrated and disrespected. It is Grant looking that system in the eye and daring it to beat him down.
Chrome Halo is the product of turbulence in both Grant’s life and the world at large. As he gets older, Grant’s illness gets worse, his quality of life continually deteriorating, rendering him more and more isolated from the world.
The album is, on occasion, shatteringly bleak, but more than anything, Chrome Halo is about love. Grant doesn’t have much time left, and this record finds him trying to temper the anger in his heart with love.
The album, produced with field recordings from hospital stays and vocal samples and very little fancy equipment, sounds like the inside of Grant’s own mind – sometimes terrifying, often bleak, always beautiful. And while the record features a strong cast of collaborators – Grant’s LOSSLESS partner Oscar Key Sung, Becky Sui Zhen, Marcus Whale, Banoffee and Felicity Yang – Chrome Halo is Grant’s album through and through, a powerful and personal manifesto that couldn’t be delivered by anyone else.
Words: Wondercore Island/Good Manners
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