It’s a thing among cannabis consumers: smoke up and play a Gramatik album. It might be the chill vibes, or the fact that albums flow seamlessly. Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: stoners love Gramatik.
Denis Jašarević, better known by his stage name Gramatik, is a New York-based electronic music producer and composer. A firm believer in the concept of music being free, he’s released 9 albums, 4 EPs, and many original scores, singles and remixes—All. For. Free. Further pursuing this ideal, Gramatik started his own record label, Lowtemp, in 2013. A few years later, the artist released his entire discography in partnership with torrents behemoth BitTorrent, and quickly thereafter, became the first artist to “tokenize himself” on the blockchain—an topic too complex to explain here.
Gramatik is also a fan of weed, and has been one for twenty years now. So, when High Times brought up the topic of cannabis consumers loving his music, he was thrilled.
“I feel super happy about that,” he said “I made every single song in my discography while I was high and I’m stoked that vibe got embedded in the music to the point where people are naturally inclined to smoke weed while listening to my albums. It makes me feel like a wizard in a way, where I somehow possess the power to imprint my creations with my high state in the moment of creating them, and the songs then act as magical artifacts that can infect people with that imprint upon listening.”
‘Puff Your Cares Away’
Today, we have the honor of dropping, exclusively, Gramatik’s latest track, a tribute to marijuana legalization in his state of residence New York. The track, “Puff Your Cares Away,” is a classic Gramatik cut featuring electronic and glitch-hop production, but with a weed oriented twist.
“My partner, Nina, pointed out the 1952 Les Paul & Mary Ford cover of ‘Smoke Rings’ to me one day,” he told High Times. “I thought it was just the coolest song to listen to while enjoying your wake and bake session. It sounds like something straight out of a Coen Brothers movie, and they are among my favorite filmmakers.”
Realizing he hadn’t really produced a cannabis-themed song in a long while, Gramatik took a chance at flipping “Smoke Rings.”
“I’ve actually never made one with such specific lyrics, and I always wanted to, so I’m glad it ended up being this one. I hope I didn’t ruin it for the fans of the original cover,” he said, laughing.
We asked why he chose High Times to honor us with this track drop.
“Well, I feel like that’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?” he asked. “Not only is the legendary High Times always on my list of essential reading, but what other publication could possibly be more suitable for a song that’s an ode to stoners?”
So, without further ado, here’s the track.
