Grant Mackay, born in 1959, is a composer, producer, sound recordist, and multi-instrumentalist. He developed an early interest in sound at the age of nine. In the late 1960s, Mackay's family engaged in sending tape-recorded letters to his grandparents, which sparked his fascination with tape recording technology. His exploration of sound intensified in the early 1970s through experiments with his father's two Telefunken reel-to-reel tape recorders. During this period, he delved into capturing found sounds, recording sound poetry, creating tape loops, layering sounds, and composing basic musical pieces. At sixteen, in 1975, Mackay composed his first sound composition titled "The Battle of the Bouvine," inspired by Georges Mathieu's abstract painting of the same name.