GLEET shares concept album ’24’

Born from decades of friendship, spontaneous jam sessions and a passion for sonic exploration, GLEET is an experimental music project unlike any other. Led by Gregor Former and Sam Neal, the endeavour evolved from their mid-90s days working at an off-license in London, where they first began crafting songs inspired by their eccentric customers.

Over the years, their informal jam sessions expanded, bringing in longtime collaborators Michael Chilokoa and Kevin Mertens, thus morphing into expansive, freeform sessions where drum loops, synths, guitars and bass collided in genre-breaking soundscapes. What started as a series of imaginary bands and playful musical concepts took on a more tangible form when GLEET was officially named in 2019. The project embraces an avant-garde philosophy, coining their own ‘scrunt’ sound, a layered and unpredictable wall of noise that thrives on creative chaos.

Their debut live performance, a continuous half-hour piece, was as polarising as it was daring, immediately establishing them as an outfit willing to leap into the unknown spheres of experimental music. In 2023, after pandemic-related delays, GLEET’s extensive jam archive was finally shaped into a full-length release. Pleased to Gleet You marked their official introduction, channeling years of improvised sessions and a shared love for artists like David Bowie, Brian Eno, Joy Division and The Clash. The album embodied the band’s ethos; unpredictable, immersive and deeply connected to their creative spontaneity.

Now, GLEET embarks on their most ambitious project yet with the new full-length record titled 24. A conceptual odyssey, 24 mirrors a full 24-hour cycle on Earth, with each of the 24 tracks representing a specific hour, mapped to a corresponding major or minor key on the circle of fifths. From midnight in A minor to the close of the day, the album captures shifting moods and global perspectives ranging from a jaguar prowling the Amazon to the thoughts of an AI grappling with existence and a refugee wandering through an uncertain world.

With a flurry of spacey textures, warbling synths, rattling percussion and expressive vocal performance, across the LP, GLEET delivers their fiercely original songwriting and progressive arrangements, resulting in a truly unique and enveloping listening experience from start to finish. Stitching subtly catchy melodic hooks into their forward-thinking, beat-driven sound, it’s a superb showcase of their visionary artistic output, once that’s sure to impress fans of avant-garde music across the UK and beyond.

Recorded across different time zones and continents, 24 presents a truly groundbreaking work, it’s a global sound collage, reflecting the unpredictable beauty and chaos of modern life. By fusing lyrical storytelling with their scrunt aesthetic, GLEET delivers an experience that challenges, provokes and immerses listeners in an ever-shifting sonic world.

Listen to 24 below