Gray Schiller didn’t expect to be running a nonprofit at 26. From middle school through college, they were relentlessly focused on becoming a folk singer. After growing up in the North Shore area, they moved to New York to attend the Pratt Institute. “I wanted just to make music, but my parents wanted me to go to college,” Schiller says. “So I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll go to art school! Then I won’t actually have to do college things!’” Through a chance encounter in a gear-oriented Facebook group, they connected with Will Karmis, another native of the Chicago suburbs living in the Big Apple. Their first night jamming together, Karmis introduced them to ambient music, and the two of them have become steady collaborators.
In 2017, Schiller dropped out. In 2019, they returned to Chicago to reorient themselves entirely around drone music and DIY culture. That same year, they organized their first durational ambient sleepover in their apartment, and every year since they’ve held another. Since the lifting of COVID restrictions, the event has gradually grown in size and ambition, so that what started as a night among friends has become formalized under the name Drone Sleepover. This year, Schiller registered their one-person music-promotion operation, StretchMetal, as a nonprofit—it describes its purpose as giving “unique and accessible opportunities to experimental, ambient, and genre-bending artists.” They’ve taken the Drone Sleepover aboveground and are hitting the road this summer to spread the gospel of midwestern ambient music.
Drone Sleepover 2023
Sat 6/24, 11 PM, Parker Karlov, address supplied upon registration at stretchmetal.org, $42, $38 in advance, all ages
As told to Micco Caporale
I’ve always been a musician—like one of those classic “picked up a guitar at five” kind. Growing up, I was really into singer-songwriter work and was actively pursuing a career as a folk musician until I was about 21. I was performing under the name At the Mall. [Laughs.] I was super influenced by artists like Frankie Cosmos and Big Thief—like that hybrid of folk and sad-boy indie pop.
When I moved to New York, I didn’t know anyone, and I was trying to form a band so I could play live. I met this person, Will Karmis, through this Facebook group for guitar gear. They’ve become my biggest collaborator and an unofficial StretchMetal coconspirator, but at the time, I was about 20 years old and had never heard of ambient music. So I went over to Will’s to do some playing and recording. We just jammed for hours with guitars and keyboards. We ended up creating drone music, but I didn’t know that’s what we were doing. I had never heard of that genre, so Will sent me home with a cassette.
Looking back, it was very much like a meme about an “ambient starter pack,” but it was a helpful introduction! Stuff like Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds, Brian Eno, Growing. From middle school till 20, I’d been aggressively pursuing this folk-music dream, and then that night happened. I was like, “Oh, here’s this genre I literally didn’t know existed . . . but it feels like my path!”
I don’t know how the story would have looked different if I had been exposed to ambient music earlier, because I think that my transition into being an ambient artist came from the same core of needing a funnel for my emotions. I just didn’t know that genre existed or had a place for me. Guitar-based music was much more familiar and accessible.
I’ve always felt things very deeply. There’s a lot of Cancer in my astrology chart, you know? So I’ve always needed an outlet for my emotions to, like, spread—one that wasn’t verbal. Music always felt like an easily accessible space for that. And the folk I was specifically interested in—I really liked how relentlessly emotional I could be in my songs.
Both folk and ambient afford space for those heavier emotions that we feel really deep inside—like super tender-to-the-touch feelings. In folk music, you’re hearing that through the actual lyrics. It’s more literal. With the ambient music I’m interested in, instead of literal communication, it’s just evoking those feelings with sound. That sound makes the listener go into their body, where they experience that heaviness, and they really have to sit with it.
By Thanksgiving of 2016, I was really struggling in school. I’d switched from Pratt to Hampshire College, but I only lasted a semester. Will had just moved back to Chicago, and I was visiting family. We were recording together, and by January, I decided to drop out.
There’s definitely a whole subgenre of ambient music from the midwest. I think it comes down to not just how it’s arranged but also how it’s made. I like to think of myself as part of a larger ecosystem of midwestern ambient traditions. And to me, for the most part, I think that exists in a very hardware-based, analog space. In music, “hardware” usually refers to when someone’s gear isn’t digitally based. At a lot of experimental shows right now, it’s a person with a laptop, so when someone says, like, “Oh, they did a hardware set,” it usually means they had a pedal board or a bunch of samplers—just something in front of them that has actual mechanical pieces.
People associate hardware-based music with warmth because of the actual circuitry involved. When you’re creating computer sounds, you’re in a digital space. At this point, there’s a lot of hybridization between digital and analog circuits. But analog has a unique warmth because, at a very technical level, you’re hearing more of the full, raw sound. It’s not being processed through a digital funnel.
I think a lot of artists in the midwest are moving away from computers or towards working within limitations. You use and adapt what you already have, you know? And that’s a very DIY attitude, which I think is strongest in the midwest because we can actually afford to do things.
There’s a lot of sharing culture too. “Oh, I need this one reverb pedal for this one thing,” and now I’m coming over and giving someone the pedal to use, and “Oh, they’re helping me record now.” It’s a warmth of community that exists to generate this warmth of sound.
And tape. To me, the midwest is about cassette culture too. A lot of bands that were my gateway into ambient were from the midwest and recording on tape. There are a lot of micro cassette labels here. I think tape is a popular vessel for a lot of experimental projects because of its accessibility and its place in share culture. When I was recording my album, we needed a duplication machine, and none of my friends had a CD duplicator—but they had tape duplicators. I’ve been on that side of lending my four-track to different artists too. It’s a swapping mentality that makes cassettes easy.
The 2017 album that Gray Schiller produced with the help of friends’ tape duplicators
Drone Sleepover started in 2019 as a project amongst friends. We came together in 2019 wanting to have a collaborative night, just kind of jamming on different drum sounds. But the idea of a drone sleepover is by no means something I’ve created. It’s kind of a traditional format within ambient communities—just some version of durational drone playing. I went to Milwaukee in 2017 with my friend Eli Smith for an eight-hour durational ambient campout, and that was my gateway into that experience.
I host ambient shows regularly, and one thing I’ve noticed is there’s this layover process when you’re coming into a new space and preparing yourself for deep listening. Ambient music is asking you to be very present or to move into this ethereal state. That’s hard to do in the window of a normal show, because that first hour you’re basically acclimating. There’s a lot of changeover, and then the ending can be abrupt. So it’s really hard to get into that space of intentional listening when you’re coming in and out like that. Drone Sleepover takes the concept of the show and stretches it into eight to ten hours, so people can enter that space and do some quality listening. There’s always this beautiful moment where a sort of veil between the outside world and the space lifts. People start connecting in this very intimate way.
At that first sleepover in 2019, we had seven artists, including myself. A few people came from out of town, so at its peak, maybe 15 guests. But when it came to the actual sleeping portion, most people headed out around 2 AM.
In early 2020, I had taken about a year hiatus from booking or performing. I was pretty exclusively focused on creating a modular synthesizer tape machine. Eventually I realized that if I kept going underground like I was, I was going to invent this thing and no one would know about it. That drone sleepover in 2019 was such a highlight of my year. I was like, “Let me get that ball rolling again. Then I’ll have some kind of presence that I can use to share my tape machine when it’s ready.” The sleepover was supposed to be more of a side thing to support my main interest in tape manufacturing, and somewhere along the way it totally flipped.
And of course the pandemic hit. I still had a sleepover in late 2020, but it was just my pod. I think we had six people. It felt very edgy at the time. [Laughs.] In 2021, it was still small—about 30 people. Last year was the first time that I was able to open it up and take it beyond my apartment. From a sound standpoint, getting to be in a warehouse space was really beautiful, because we could really fill the room with the drones and not worry about neighbors. And I didn’t have to cap how many artists I was working with.
More than seven hours of live recordings from the 2022 Drone Sleepover
We had ten artists total, which was really special to see, because it’s a really collaborative community event where both performers and listeners have a hand in the flow of the night. They help out, whether that’s loading and unloading or sharing resources or playing together.
One point of pride for StretchMetal is that it’s all DIY ethics. It seems like a bigger deal because it’s a nonprofit now, but it’s still just me. I set what I think is a reasonable price for everything, but I want more than archetypal electronics bros to perform and come to my events. So whether it’s an application fee or a ticketed event, no one is turned away as a potential artist or participant for lack of funds. Every application and ticket has a button next to it saying, “Send me a fee-waiver or sliding-scale request.”
I pay a space-rental fee, and then artists split the door. Right now, artists come into the sleepover knowing that they’re doing it for the love of the night and community. I hope to grow the sleepover, so we can maintain that DIY ethos while being able to offer an artist guarantee up front. I want a healthy music economy, and people are able to sustain their music projects easier when there’s financial backing. We cannot pay our bills with exposure. That’s one reason StretchMetal became a nonprofit: so we can apply for grants and other outside funding, which will hopefully attract a wider range of artists and get them paid.
I’m also taking Drone Sleepover on the road for the first time this year—New York and Seattle, because there are communities who’ve expressed interest and will help. There’s a poll on our website asking, “Where should we go next?” Wherever there’s an ambient community that wants to lend a hand, StretchMetal wants to go.
