A cinematic synth dream world
Étamine is the electronic music collaboration between multi-instrumentalists Brock Geiger and Ian Jarvis.
Inspired by early instrumental synthesizer music, collaborative duo Étamine create immersive tracks that envelop listeners in a cinematic dream world. With their debut collection of music, lines blur between human and machine, between grounded and celestial, and between introspective-wandering and body-clutching grooves. Étamine’s synthesized, abstract landscapes are rich and focused electronic arrangements that encapsulate multi-dimensional aural scenes, presenting a dynamic listen that moves through nostalgic synth-wave, glitchy arcade, and droning, ambient soundscapes fluidly.
We’ve spent the past 15 years performing, composing and recording in a multitude of settings, and collectively have contributed to over 30 records and played shows around the globe with our respective projects, Raleigh and Chairs. Étamine sees us pack away our guitars for a fully synthesized sound and a truly collaborative project.
Brock: For “Antiblue,” I specifically remember being psyched on the initial groove being a straight-ahead, sort of UK club feel. We’d been holed up hiding from the pandemic for about a year at this point, and it felt good to be working on a track that I imagined people might dance and sweat to one day.
Ian: Like most of our songs, we were trying to create a sonic atmosphere in which one could escape their everyday life. In this case it was the mundane reality of social isolation. The production was meant to be immersive – we want to transport the listener to another world.
Brock: When we were working on these songs and something felt like it was getting close to the finish line, I would print a rough mix, smoke a spliff, and take them out in headphones on my bicycle to hear the track outside of the studio and experience the immersion of the sound design in the context of other stimulation. When I was checking out “Antiblue,” I was riding through downtown Calgary around midnight, with no traffic on the road and was fully entranced by the way the groove of the track perfectly mirrored the rhythm of lights reflecting off the glass skyscrapers. The way the arrangement evolved also instilled this inherent momentum that made it feel like it could keep cruising forever.
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