Bio
The Short
Glen Murrant is an electronic music composer and producer from Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, on the East Coast of Canada. His works are a piano-centric amalgam of ambient electronic music, at times bordering on neoclassical, influenced by progressive art-rock in the style of Radiohead, Marillion, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, and Thomas Dolby. Glen released his first collection of songs, ‘Dasein’ in 2002. Then, after a 20 year hiatus he released his newest album, ‘Nonlinear’ in January 2023.
The Long
There was always a piano in the Murrant house. Glen first took piano lessons, briefly, at the age of 8 living in the remote community of Ingonish in northern Nova Scotia. Following the death of his father a year later the family relocated, and the piano lessons would not resume until Glen was 15. He had very little interest in performing others’ music, always preferring to write his own – an inclination that has never left him.
Raised by a single mother, money was tight, but he saved what he could to buy old, used synthesizers and recording gear from the local pawn shop. His earliest performances in front of an audience as a teen were disastrous for various reasons: poor equipment, lack of skill, wrong audience, weak original material.
Glen left home at 18, bound for the city of Halifax, hoping to connect with like-minded musicians. Instead of forming a band and getting gigs he found himself working in record stores and musical instrument shops. He briefly opened a recording studio, The Outer Limits, which coincidentally was next door to Terry Pulliam’s Soundmarket studio where Sloan had just finished recording their debut studio album, ‘Smeared’. Inroads to the local music scene were proving elusive and self-doubt was rampant. A change was needed so Glen left Halifax behind to attend the Bachelor of Music program at ST.F.X University.
The program expanded Glen’s creative horizons, introducing him to a new musical vocabulary and deepening his understanding of music theory. While his playing did improve, it fell short of his professors’ expectations. Midway through his second year he left the music program to focus on English literature and philosophy.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts, Glen returned to the relative safety of familiar territory – working in record stores, then another recording studio in Halifax, finally settling into a sales role at Glubes Sound Studio in Dartmouth. In 2002 he published a limited release; the album ‘Dasein’. The album went completely unnoticed and Glen abandoned all hope of making a living in the music industry.
He returned to Cape Breton Island with his young family in 2008, furthering his business career – but always with music in the back of his mind. During the pandemic of 2020, long dormant melodies began to stir once again, and Glen would begin recording his first album in over 20 years: ‘Nonlinear’.