Biography
An innovative experimental producer and musician, Katie Gately fuses technical precision with raw feeling to generate gripping sonic results. Across solo projects and partnerships alongside Björk, Zola Jesus, and serpentwithfeet, she deploys numerous software tools that reshape both her vocals and captured noises into intricate textures stretching from jagged industrial assemblages to buoyant, oblique pop. Her 2013 release Pipes, an expansive vocal assemblage, already revealed a talent for offsetting impish sonic fragments against broad atmospheric layers, whereas Color in 2016 highlighted the playful tunefulness at the center of her approach. The intimate focus of her early-2020s output underscored her capacity to convey narratives and atmospheres with striking force, channeling the shattering grief triggered by her mother’s passing into the turbulent, splintered contours of Loom in 2020 while converting the volatile extremes of gestation and new motherhood into the stark oppositions of Fawn/Brute in 2023.
Raised across separate New York City boroughs, Gately absorbed the opera her father favored along with selections from her mother’s preferred songwriters, among them Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and David Bowie. Following a Carleton College degree earned in Minnesota, further study of sound design back in New York City, and a film-production MFA completed at the University of Southern California, she turned to music-making. An enthusiastic field recordist, she supplied material to the self-titled 2009 CD issued by the collage collective Seattle Phonographers Union. After posting early pieces online via SoundCloud, she delivered two well-received 2013 projects: the Public Information EP Katie Gately, built around an ice-cube-in-glass sample, and the Blue Tapes cassette Pipes, whose thick vocal strata required more than six months of assembly.
Following a limited lathe-cut 7-inch issued with Prayer (Joe Houpert) through FET Press, she joined FatCat Records’ split series by sharing an EP with Tlaotlon. In 2015 she featured on Nosaj Thing’s album Fated and reworked Björk’s “Family.” She then joined the Tri Angle roster, where her debut full-length Color appeared in October 2016 and introduced greater formal clarity alongside melodic emphasis. Subsequent activity encompassed sound-design duties for multiple short films, additional remixes for Björk and Zola Jesus, production work on serpentwithfeet’s Soil from 2018, and preparations for her own follow-up record. When her mother received a diagnosis of a rare, terminal cancer, Gately relocated to Brooklyn; while providing care she assembled pieces reflecting her mourning that incorporated evocative field elements such as earthquakes, closing coffins, and meat being struck. After her mother’s 2018 passing, the material coalesced into the anguished album Loom, issued by Houndstooth in February 2020.
Shortly thereafter Gately and her husband chose to begin a family, welcoming daughter Quinn in early 2021. The fluctuating psychological and bodily conditions of pregnancy prompted further composition; “Howl” premiered on Adult Swim’s Digitalis compilation in October 2021 before appearing on her third album. Dedicated to her daughter, Fawn/Brute arrived in March 2023 and captured the elation and disorientation of new parenthood, the mood impact of pregnancy-related complications, and echoes of her own adolescent defiance, drawing sonic and stylistic cues from sources that included Animal Collective, children’s music, Public Image Ltd., This Heat, and rattled shoeboxes.
Raised across separate New York City boroughs, Gately absorbed the opera her father favored along with selections from her mother’s preferred songwriters, among them Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and David Bowie. Following a Carleton College degree earned in Minnesota, further study of sound design back in New York City, and a film-production MFA completed at the University of Southern California, she turned to music-making. An enthusiastic field recordist, she supplied material to the self-titled 2009 CD issued by the collage collective Seattle Phonographers Union. After posting early pieces online via SoundCloud, she delivered two well-received 2013 projects: the Public Information EP Katie Gately, built around an ice-cube-in-glass sample, and the Blue Tapes cassette Pipes, whose thick vocal strata required more than six months of assembly.
Following a limited lathe-cut 7-inch issued with Prayer (Joe Houpert) through FET Press, she joined FatCat Records’ split series by sharing an EP with Tlaotlon. In 2015 she featured on Nosaj Thing’s album Fated and reworked Björk’s “Family.” She then joined the Tri Angle roster, where her debut full-length Color appeared in October 2016 and introduced greater formal clarity alongside melodic emphasis. Subsequent activity encompassed sound-design duties for multiple short films, additional remixes for Björk and Zola Jesus, production work on serpentwithfeet’s Soil from 2018, and preparations for her own follow-up record. When her mother received a diagnosis of a rare, terminal cancer, Gately relocated to Brooklyn; while providing care she assembled pieces reflecting her mourning that incorporated evocative field elements such as earthquakes, closing coffins, and meat being struck. After her mother’s 2018 passing, the material coalesced into the anguished album Loom, issued by Houndstooth in February 2020.
Shortly thereafter Gately and her husband chose to begin a family, welcoming daughter Quinn in early 2021. The fluctuating psychological and bodily conditions of pregnancy prompted further composition; “Howl” premiered on Adult Swim’s Digitalis compilation in October 2021 before appearing on her third album. Dedicated to her daughter, Fawn/Brute arrived in March 2023 and captured the elation and disorientation of new parenthood, the mood impact of pregnancy-related complications, and echoes of her own adolescent defiance, drawing sonic and stylistic cues from sources that included Animal Collective, children’s music, Public Image Ltd., This Heat, and rattled shoeboxes.
Albums
Singles
