Electric Eye // Tou

Name: Electric Eye // Tou
Start: 2024-11-23T22:00:00+02:00
Location: Tou

Schedule

Sat Nov 23 2024 at 10:00 pm

UTC+02:00

Location

Tou | Stavanger, RO

Electric Eye - Dyp Tid (2024)
Dyp Tid is a contemplation of the unknown and the ineffable. Crafted in a landscape where time and space collapse, this album is Electric Eye's most ambitious project to date. Originally commissioned by Sildajazz - the Haugesund International Jazz Festival - and premiered there in 2022, Dyp Tid is both a meditative journey and an exploration of what it means to exist in a universe where time stretches far beyond humanity's grasp.
We began this project with a sense that we needed to detach ourselves from everything we knew, from anything comfortable. So we delved deeper. Our 2021 album Horizons - recorded in a lighthouse off the coast of Norway - was "inspired by volcano eruptions, sub-sea adventures and the raw power of the surrounding sea". A natural continuation was to take it all one step further and create a frame of concept or an image structure we could work within centered around the concept of deep time, creation and the first rays of light after. Through days and nights of improvisation, we created music that felt more like an echo of something we couldn't quite grasp than something we consciously shaped. We let ourselves get lost in abstract themes, discovering sounds that evoke mountain ranges rising, continents drifting, and light breaking through darkness for the first time.
The American author John McPhee uses analogies to help us better understand the relationship between our own perception of time and deep time: Stretch out your arm and let it represent the history of the Earth, with the Earth's birth occurring at the shoulder; the Cambrian period and complex life forms begin at the wrist, the age of mammals (the last 66 million years) starts at the outermost joint of the middle finger, and human history is so brief that it can be erased with a swipe of a nail file.
Dyp Tid is not just an album; it is a space, a mental landscape where sound and time intersect. Originally performed live in Skåre Kirke, an octagonal wooden church in Haugesund, Norway built in 1858. These six atmospheric compositions centre church organs, synths and coral vocals, gradually winding through ambient minimalism, kosmische improvisations and experimental psych-jazz. We have always been drawn to the cinematic, to the sense that something feels larger than life, and in Dyp Tid we wove these elements together into something both deeply personal and utterly elusive.
Recording in Bergen ́s Duper Studio, the recording space became a laboratory for our new ideas. We delved into analog technology, explored vintage machines, and experimented with what lay at the edge of our control. We sought the sound of time's depths, something that felt infinite and uncontrollable. In an age where everything seems algorithmic and predictable, we aimed to create something that refused to be boxed in - something that lives and breathes by its own rules. The album intricately weaves together live recordings from the wooden church and studio sessions, often oscillating between the two in the course of a single track.
Dyp Tid is our response to a world that feels increasingly fragmented and chaotic. We aimed to capture that feeling of being out of sync, both with ourselves and with the world around us. Like a wave hitting the distant shore, it might resonate in ways that only a few will notice, and that's okay. This is music for those who listen for the echoes, a conscious yet subtle commentary on our times.
We wanted to create something that isn't just sound but a state of being - a way to understand, or perhaps accept, that we are small parts of something far greater than ourselves. And in Dyp Tid, we believe we have found just that.