Saya Gray Turns Electric Brixton Into a Dreamscape of Emotion and Noise

Alan Bryce
36 minutes ago
2 min read

Electric Brixton – 4th November 2025

WORDS / IMAGES ALAN BRYCE

Saya Gray Turns Electric Brixton Into a Dreamscape of Emotion and Noise — Alan Bryce Photo Credit

Tonight at Electric Brixton, Toronto-born songstress Saya Gray turned the venue into a shapeshifting dreamscape of sound and emotion. Her music, impossible to pin down, moves between alt-pop, folk, electronica, and jazz with effortless confidence. Raised in Toronto’s creative Beaches neighbourhood by a Japanese music educator and a Scottish-Canadian jazz trumpeter, Gray grew up steeped in rhythm and experimentation. She picked up the piano as a child, switched to bass at ten, and by eighteen was holding down grooves in a Jamaican Pentecostal church band. After relocating to London at nineteen, she spent years touring the world as a bassist and musical director for names like Daniel Caesar and Willow Smith before finally stepping into her own well-deserved spotlight.

Her debut 19 Masters (2022) and the QWERTY EPs (2023–24) hinted at the restless innovation that’s become her signature, but this year’s SAYA pushed things even further—an album inspired by her travels in Japan that earned her a Polaris Music Prize nomination and cemented her as one of the most fearless voices in modern alt-pop.

Opening the night, Joviale delivered a dazzling burst of colour and rhythm—a fusion of jazzy funk, soulful pop, and experimental electronics. Their set felt like an invocation: bold, kinetic, and dripping with attitude. By the time Gray emerged, the room was charged.

From the first note, Saya Gray’s performance felt like stepping inside a lucid dream. Her set unfurled as a hypnotic journey—psychedelic pop textures melting into glitchy R&B grooves, fragile acoustic passages giving way to walls of sound. The audience swayed, transfixed, hanging on every shimmering chord and sudden silence. Tracks from SAYA—including “..THUS IS WHY (I DON’T SPRING 4 LOVE)”, “SHELL (OF A MAN)” and “PUDDLE (OF ME)”—showcased her instinct for balancing vulnerability with precision. Each song felt sculpted yet spontaneous, like she was discovering it with us in real time.

The encore—“416 FALLAWAY” and the haunting “IF THERE’S NO SEAT IN THE SKY (WILL YOU FORGIVE ME???)”—brought the night to an ethereal close, equal parts meditative and gut-wrenching. It wasn’t just a gig; it was a moment of collective release.

Saya Gray doesn’t just perform—she builds worlds. Every sound, every breath, feels intentional yet alive, bursting with the thrill of risk. At Electric Brixton, she reminded everyone why she’s one of the most original forces shaping contemporary music: unpredictable, intimate, and utterly transcendent.