Tell All Your Friends About 130Grit Sound Studio

Before we begin, I need to clarify something that I just learned while writing this article. 130Grit Sound Studio is not an artist—rather it’s a music label and recording owned by Toronto native Andrew Moniz. This is Andrew Moniz.

Andrew Moniz is a multi-instrumental artist that has been producing all manner of music for several years now. Most of us in the VGM community know him as “that surf rock guy", but that’s a massive oversimplification of his talent. Andrew is a guitarist, drummer, producer, engineer, beat-maker…the list goes on and on. A quick visit to his website will show you that he offers everything from guitar tutorials to bossa nova jam tracks.

But let’s rewind for a second: maybe you don’t know Andrew as “that surf rock guy”. Maybe you’ve never heard of him at all. In that case, please take a few minutes to listen to this track.

I could spend several pages trying to describe his style to you—guitars soaked in reverb, drums that gallop and trot, basslines that crawl into your ears—or you can hear it for yourself. Sure, Andrew produces probably the best surf rock covers in the entire VGM community, but his musical styles are much broader than that.

Here’s a short list of the styles that he’s covered:

• Surf rock

• Latin rock

• Latin jazz

• Bossa nova

• Flamenco rock

• Funk rock

I could keep going, but I think you get the idea. Here’s another one of my favorites of his:

Simply put, there’s no one else in the VGM community making music like Andrew does. According to his website, "you’ll hear evidence of his musical lineage mixed with urban sensibility—that distinctly cross-cultural sound”.

I would put it another way: Andrew is a musical melting pot. A smorgasbord of styles that never leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Listen; it’s hard enough to develop one style of music well. The fact that Andrew can seemingly juggle so many styles without breaking a sweat is remarkable, to say the least.

And yet, we’ve only talked about Andrew’s video game covers. There’s still the backing tracks, the originals, the guitar tutorials, the beat catalogue, etc. Honestly, I could spend an entire article talking about each of these, but your time is precious, dear reader, so let me say this: Andrew Moniz is not an artist; he’s a pioneer.

Tell all your friends about Andrew Moniz because he’s off to find new musical horizons, and I can’t wait to see what he finds.