The recording project of Vancouver‘s Derek Janzen, Island Eyes has long been crafting synth-based dream pop which marries the mundane with the otherworldly. Take 2015’s self-titled record with its classic narrative arc and mythological imagery. What we described as a “fever dream of a would-be hero.” OTHER LIGHT developed the aesthetic further, conjuring a richly lo-fi sound across which Janzen’s cryptic, concise lyrics could drift—some strange vision or dream taped to VHS and played back in the half-light gloom of the night.
This summer sees the release of a brand new Island Eyes full-length, OTHER HEAVEN, and ahead of the track Janzen has released single, ‘Underwater’. The track is perhaps a few degrees warmer than previous releases, some of the starkness dialled back and the vocals a little more welcoming. The track is about the “cyclical nature of anxiety,” Janzen explains, “but also the prospects of hopeful beginnings with each new day.”
This hope is apparent in the leavened sound, but the Island Eyes aesthetic remains intact. For in the submerged weightlessness of the track, the half-logic of strange imagery—visions of shadows, the wind and the sea, speaking in tongues—comes to feel more like total logic. The subconscious manifest in shapes we understand.
