Grand Analog is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 hip hop

Canadian hip hop

The Canadian hip hop scene was first established in the 1980s. Through a variety of factors, it developed much more slowly than Canada's popular rock music scene, and apart from a short-lived burst of mainstream popularity from 1989 to 1991, it remained largely an underground phenomenon until the...

 band, formed in 2006 and fronted by Odario Williams. The group was conceived as a project combining R&B, jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

 and rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 influences into a hip hop

Hip hop

Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic culture that originated in African-American and Latino communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically the Bronx. DJ Afrika Bambaataa outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, breaking and graffiti writing...

 style performed mainly on live instruments instead of digital electronics.

The group started to take shape in the early 2000s when Williams, then fronting Mood Ruff

Mood Ruff

Mood Ruff was a conscious hip-hop group hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The group consisted of Odario, Spitz, Breakz, and ICQRI. Their final album I Do My Own Stunts, which was released in 2005, contained their first hit, "Rocketship".-History:...

, began digging into his father's record collection and experimenting with less traditional hip hop sounds on his own time. When Mood Ruff broke up following their 2005 album I Do My Own Stunts, Williams officially launched Grand Analog, which he describes as a project designed as much for live performance as for recording, as his primary band. Williams has told the press that "sonically, I knew that I wanted to dig into dub and rock and soul. I’ve always wanted to do that, but years ago I wasn’t free enough upstairs to know that I could."

Williams later decided to pursue opportunities as an actor and moved to Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, where the group is currently based. The band released their first album, Calligraffiti, in 2007. A followup album, titled Metropolis Is Burning, was released on May 26, 2009.

Discography

• I'll Walk Alone EP (2006)
• Calligraffiti (2007)
• Touch Your Toes EP (2008)
• Metropolis Is Burning (2009)