Exron Premiere: Living Light – “Traversing the Abyss” 

Globally renowned electronic artist Eartha Harris shares long-awaited ‘Multidimensional Sandcasltes’ LP under her downtempo dub alias, Living Light. 

For more than two decades, Eartha Harris has been pouring her talent into the electronic music space. She first stepped into the scene under the name Project Sphere as a solo artist; however, in the mid-2000s, she joined the live electronic band Psylab as their lead keyboardist. Then, in 2013, Eartha adopted the moniker Living Light and quickly gained international support for her dynamic dub offerings. 

Eartha has impressively released on sought-after psychedelic labels like Desert Tax, Merkaba Music, Sofa Beats, and Liquid Sound Design. Her range of influence for the Living Light project includes ​​dub, downtempo, dub techno, and psydub–never defining her projects under one genre, as she prefers to push boundaries and allow her creativity to shine.

Today, Eartha premieres “Traversing the Abyss” as Living Light ahead of her ‘Multidimensional Sandcastles’ LP. The 7-track offering features 44 minutes of melodic, bass-laden soundscapes innovated by the minds of Eartha and several esteemed collaborators.

The LP is a culmination of years of creative energy, as it was produced during the pandemic while Eartha could isolate herself in the studio without the pressure of an upcoming tour or other deadlines. However, once restrictions began to ease up, she crammed to complete the body of work, sometimes planted in her studio chair for 12-16 hours straight. She noted, “Terrible for the health, I know.” 

‘Multidimensional Sandcastles’ was released on Bandcamp ahead of its global release and has already gained exceptional support from fans, garnering the best-selling accolade across nine different genres. It even impressively hit the 20th best-selling release of all electronic genres.

After pouring her heart into the release and finally sharing it with the world, we asked Eartha to describe what she was feeling!

She replied, “Well it feels a bit like a rollercoaster, really. Collaborating with other musicians, especially such significant and talented musicians, meant wanting to make sure each track was something they would be proud to have their name attached to. Since all the actual production was done by me, it meant many, many long days and nights pouring over the details of each track until it was just right.”

Featured on ‘Multidimensional Sandcastles’ are Simon Posford of Shpongle, Chris Barker of Ott & The All-Seeing I, and Gabriel Le Mar of Saafi Brothers. On working with this incredible talent roster, Eartha said, “In all three cases, these were artists that had either offered me a musical part or remix swap, so I felt very comfortable asking them if they wanted to work together.” 

She continued, “Actually, in the case of Simon, it happened rather instantaneously since we were just sitting around chatting about politics over messenger and he offered me a bassline. I said yes, and he said something along the lines of ‘How about now? Send me a dub drum loop! And now send me a simple melody!’ and within about an hour or two, I suddenly had a bassline, three guitar parts, and multiple twisted effected shpongled versions of my synth melody to then spend the next two years building a track out of haha.”

At 44 minutes in length, ‘Multidimensional Sandcastles’ makes the perfect candidate for a vinyl record. In a fateful fashion, Eartha said, “Come this spring, I realized I had written 44 minutes of music, which is the exact limit of what can fit on a 12” vinyl LP.”

Today, pressing music into vinyl creates a hard-to-come-by bond between artist and creation. Eartha compares it to seeing art on Instagram versus going to a museum and experiencing the art in its rawest form.

“Musicians have been a bit robbed of the experience of presenting their art in a significant and high quality manner (other than shows) since streaming services became the norm, and so I wanted to support that,” said Eartha.

While staying true to her self-titled DJ project, Eartha Harris, she reinvigorates the Living Light spirit with ‘Multidimensional Sandcastles.’ Like any priceless body of work, each offering tells a story. “‘Traversing The Abyss’ was about how it felt trying to survive as a musician during Covid and navigating what seemed like a world going crazy (though in retrospect, ‘Traversing the Land Mines’ might have been a better title),” she laughed.

Eartha continued, “‘A Long Winter’ was written as Russia began attacking Ukraine and it just seemed like the challenging times would never end. ‘Fever Dream’ was actually written when I finally did get Covid, and so on.”

When asked which song from the LP resonates with her most, Eartha alluded to the title track, which she worked on alongside Simon Posford. ‘Multidimensional Sandcastles’ makes a bold statement with its title alone, setting a larger-than-life expectation. The history behind the name was erected from Eartha’s inquisitive nature and has a compelling story. 

“Well the name came from a science article about how the brain actually physically constantly builds multifaceted sandcastle-looking structures as it learns and grows,” she said. “I think it was Simon that had actually posted it online. I was just about a month into the collab with him and I joked that it would be a stellar name for a track, after which I titled our track that and then it just stuck. But the name also speaks to how much of a cerebral experience the pandemic was. Many of us were left to our imaginations as the days and nights drew on in isolation, and I felt like I was constantly building up and breaking down imaginary worlds, or ‘sandcastles,’ in my mind as I imagined different timelines for the future.”

She also had some comments about the creative process behind “Origin Story” and “Long Winter.” The former is a collaboration with Gabriel Le Mar, one of her biggest musical inspirations since she discovered the Saafi Brothers in 2001. “So not only was it such a personal honor for me to work with him, but his parts just meshed so immediately with everything I had started that the track built itself and became perfect to me incredibly quickly. It was a euphoric experience, really.”

As mentioned, “A Long Winter” was written during the time Russia invaded Ukraine. “I was in a bit of a sad place when I started writing it, and it originally had this sort of plodding staccato synth bass line, which was fine, but I had enjoyed working with Chris Barker so much on ‘Fever Dream’ that I asked him to give it a go on it.” 

Since the track was pretty much complete, Eartha was unsure how much room Chris would have to get creative. “But the bass line he came up with was just so incredible that it made the whole song express itself in this beautiful, almost sensual way, that it couldn’t have otherwise.”

Stay tuned for Living Light’s release of ‘Multidimensional Sandcasltes’ tomorrow across all streaming platforms, which includes a radio edit of “Traversing the Abyss.” For now, immerse yourself in Exron’s exclusive premiere of “Traversing the Abyss” below!

Featured image courtesy KJ Studios

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Ashley

I’ve been a part of the dance music scene for nearly a decade and with Exron for more than half of that time. My first event was Diplo’s Mad Decent but these days you’ll find me at Club Space or the Brooklyn Mirage. Some of my top artists are G Jones, Tipper, Of The Trees, and CharlestheFirst. My favorite genres are techno, experimental bass, and ambient but I’ll get down to anything with a beat!

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