marine eyes (interview)

Good morning.

Today we’re listening to marine eyes, an ambient composer based in Los Angeles. She blends field recordings, processed guitar and synths, and some ethereal vocals to create warm and peaceful soundscapes. Her latest album, to belong, leans into the “textual vocals,” as she put it, which were influenced by Dolores O’Riordan and Björk among others. to belong was just released widely this past Friday. We’re also playing her 2022 album, chamomile, which matches that tea’s calming characteristics. She also writes an excellent newsletter called cloud collecting which includes her “women of ambient” monthly mix series. An interview with marine eyes follows the streaming links.

to belong - marine eyes (50m, some textural vocals; lyrics on tracks 4 and 8)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

chamomile - marine eyes (40m, textural vocals on a couple tracks)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

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You grew up in a household full of music. Tell us about your early memories of the specific artists and genres that awakened music appreciation in you.

My Mom and Dad have an extensive record, CD and tape collection. Starting at an early age I would lay on the carpet with headphones on and try out the many different options I had access to—The Beatles (especially the White Album), Peter Gabriel, Enya, Brian Eno produced U2 albums, Nancy Wilson’s more mellow works and whatever soundtracks they had.

My older sister Michelle introduced me to a lot of electronic and new wave music while I was in high school and took me to a few of the classic electronic music Sunset parties in San Rafael (Northern California) and PopScene at 330 Ritch in San Francisco with DJ Aaron Axelsen. They played a lot of Radiohead, New Order, Pixies, Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, Lush, and Slowdive. I loved how free I felt dancing to electronic and alternative music.

Your new record, to belong, creates a space of peace and acceptance. Tell us about your journey with this kind of music.

Thank you. Music was a sacred ritual in my house growing up and it became natural for me to treat it the same. I learned that music was something to lean on, it could be a friend when you needed one and bring peace and comfort. When my grandmother had a stroke that took away her ability to speak but she could still sing, I became even more fascinated with music’s therapeutic forms.

As far as influences, I distinctly remember hearing the song “Sitting Still Moving Still Staring Out” by His Name Is Alive on the Jerry Maguire soundtrack and listening to it over and over—loving the repetitiveness and calm it brought to me. When I was a junior in high school I bought the Vanilla Sky soundtrack and became enamored with Sigur Rós. Their sense of atmosphere, layering, and vocal effects showed me music could be anything. I also owe much of my love of ethereal vocals to Dolores O’Riordan, Hope Sandoval, Björk, and Elizabeth Fraser.

In college, I studied in London for a semester and listened to the album Feel Good Lost by Broken Social Scene on the Tube daily. It was perfect for watching the world go by, something that connects me to the ambient genre. This was in 2004 and I remember I had a lot of Mogwai, The Album Leaf (In A Safe Place had just come out), Radiohead B-sides, The Postal Service, Built to Spill, Björk, Mirah, Plaid, Aphex Twin and Squarepusher on my iPod. I roamed London’s record shops and bought early Four Tet and Boards of Canada. I became friends with a group of experimental musicians living in a warehouse who encouraged me to share my guitar motifs and simple melodies more. At that time I kept my music quite close and didn’t share it beyond close friends and family.

In my San Francisco years (I lived in SF/Oakland from 2005-2013), I played some live shows on my own and with a friend but never properly recorded any songs besides one demo. I started recording ambient ideas using sounds of the ocean and city streets with my vocals and guitar recorded through GarageBand but never shared those. When I became a single mom and moved to a little house with my son, I had a music room and was always playing and writing songs in my free time.

It wasn’t until I met my husband James in 2014 that things shifted for me with production. We started writing music together immediately and even our first EP had some ambient leanings. James has been an electronic music producer since the 90’s (he has the 30th anniversary of his ambient album Atmospherics this year) that I started to dream of properly producing on my own. James got me a Boss RC-505 for my birthday in 2016 and I began nightly loops. Many of these were turned into awakened souls songs (my band with my husband). When we finished writing our album with 36 (The Other Side of Darkness) in 2020 the three of us decided to do a remix album of our own songs (another ambient hallmark trait, ha). I made a few solo remixes and this marked the beginning of marine eyes. Soon after that, I started writing my first album, idyll. That album is me learning how to produce and capture feelings I was attempting to translate in song form.

The new record features "the cherished guitar of a late uncle." Tell us about your history with that instrument.

My Uncle Bill was one of the people who helped me believe I had a musical voice to share from a young age and always encouraged me to keep creating. He wrote endless amounts of folk songs on his 1962 Goya G-20 classical. My aunt gave me his guitar after he passed from Lewy Body Dementia, and I’m honored to keep it in the family. My song “cemented” on my new album uses the Goya with my pedalboard. Even the vocals on that song are sung through the pickup, giving it a ghostly vocal effect. When I was little he would make my sisters and me mixtapes with his favorite songs, and one of them had sounds of him walking from his back porch to his chicken coop in Olympia, Washington. I remember loving how he blended recordings of his home straight into a song, so I added my footfall from a favorite local park into this track as another way to honor him.

You achieve the impression of a vast space, using "treated guitar and soft synthesizers." Walk us through how you got that sound with pedals or other tools.

Most of my songs start by allowing myself to be in the present moment. I often use field recordings to begin the song’s story, then create a loop and build from there. I love my pedalboard setup, and a lot of my sound comes from vocal, guitar, and synth textures using the Strymon El Capistan pedal. I gravitate towards loops that shift, degrade, and are easily manipulated. We got our Osmose synth about two months into the sessions for to belong, and that changed the direction of the album. The MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) gave me the ability to create these gentle nuances and character which helped me tell the stories I wanted to share. I also use a lot of the Chase Bliss Mood pedal for layering and textures.

You sing a bit on the record. How do you think about integrating your voice with the powerful instrumental sounds you produce?

I often use my voice in a textural way but have allowed myself to sing with upfront vocals when I feel called to it. A lot of my song ideas start with an ambient indie motif and with “mended own” and “bridges” I decided to let those ideas live and breathe, building textures around them. It is freeing to let myself follow whatever song format I want and is all a practice in allowing the song to take me where it wants to go. I often have many drafts of songs that sound entirely different and have made it a habit to keep each one. Creating music in this way has helped me listen and trust my intuition more. Some songs beg for me to morph them, pitch them down and manipulate them and others tell me to keep them close to the original idea.

We also loved your previous record, chamomile. Tell us about your history with the tea.

My first jobs (besides my family’s comic book store) were coffee shops and I started drinking chamomile regularly then. I would sit with a French press of chamomile and my journal on breaks from work, treating that as my time to come back to center. Chamomile has always represented calm to me and I love buying bouquets for my house too. It felt natural to name my second album after the flower which has been a part of my life for so many years.

You've released several amazing collaborative records. How do you collaborate with others, practically? What tips might you have for other artists pursuing collaborations?

Every collaboration I’ve been involved with has brought new sides out of me, which to me represents growth. Taking yourself out of your comfort zone is where real magic can happen sometimes. My first collaboration, Palettes was with Pepo Galan and my awakened souls project via Hush Hush Records back in 2020, and that sparked my love of working with others (besides James, of course). Sharing files back and forth via email is the best kind of pen-pal relationship, period.

My album, Unfailing Love with zakè was written over the course of three weeks after I just wrapped up the idyll sessions, and my eyes began twitching from overuse of the computer, ha. That album needed to be born quickly. My album with IKSRE, Nurture, was much slower and followed us through opposite seasons, sharing field recordings and stories on each place we were geographically and emotionally at the time. Keep The Orange Sun brought us extremely close to From Overseas (Kévin), and we would love to make another album with him one day. This just goes to show, all collaborations have their own story and can take you back to the time of your life when you were writing them. My tips for pursuing collaborations would be to find other musicians you love and don’t be afraid to ask (but also to be ok if people say no). The ambient community is always collaborating and everyone seems to be only a few degrees of separation away.

What music do you listen to when you're doing busywork, like answering emails, etc.

I have curated a monthly mix series called ‘women of ambient’ for the last three years and am often listening to the songs and artists I am adding for the following month’s mix. Lately, I have been listening to Isabel Pine’s new EP, Where the Flowers Grow and the new Geotic album, The Anchorite. I also listen to my friends’ new albums which are plentiful and always a joy to sit with and give feedback on. Being part of the Past Inside the Present community gives me endless inspiration. When I need to keep the energy high for busywork and working out, I listen to my husband’s acid music.

Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.

Lucy Gooch. Her music and vocal layering are timeless, connected and reminiscent of Kate Bush.

What are you working on next?

Currently, I am working on live show preparation. I have a few exciting shows coming up in LA over the next few months. After that, I would love to compile the b-sides from to belong and share those at some point. I also want to work on a new album with James (maybe even with a new band name) and look at the folder on my computer titled #4 and start fine tuning some song ideas I have going into sleep loop tracks.