Gemini Eye is the musical project of Gem, a musician, producer, performer and visual artist from Croydon, South London.
A potted history of Gemini Eye: In 2012, Gem started recording music in the basement of the abandoned government building in central Croydon where they live dat the time. The project grew into a psychedelic lo-fi noise pop record, recorded in the basement (giving the entire record its distinctive roomy sound) during 2012-2013. At this time,Gem was also playing drums for doom quartet Mount, who rehearsed in the same space.
The following years were spent working on larger collaborative musical projects including:
●Singer, co-writer, The Upper World
●Produced The Upper World's debut single, It's Hard To Operate A Zip When You're Burning, one of Jim Cambo from Freshonthenet's 'best tracks of 2019'
●Musical director and arranger for an experimental opera, Anat Ben-David's Kairos, performed internationally and at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
●Drums and piano on the Cannonball Statman record Playing Dead ,plus engineering and producing their subsequent, as yet unreleased album.
In 2018, Gem started working as a studio assistant at a recording studio in central London, where--secretly, after closing hours--the majority of Murdered Arc Remains was recorded over an eight month period.
Gem is non-binary, but as with previous projects like The Upper World, the intention has never been to make the visibility of their queer identity a priority or a feature ."I definitely think my non-binary-ness is inherent in the work that I make. Particularly the new record...it's about how language is a structure that we depend upon but also are limited by . Like, there are always things between words that we can't express, which is why we have music and visual art and stuff. But we depend so much on language every day, and it gets us into trouble. This record is full of songs about people not being able to understand emails or letters for some reason, and being unable to communicate in all sorts of ways. It's a romanticisation, or even a glorification, of the struggle to even identify as a human, the problems our incredible complexity brings."
The record release has been preceded by two single releases:
The Devil
The Devil seems at first to be an innocuous folk ballad àla Fleet Foxes--an innocent melody carried along by baritone ukulele and gentle harmonies asks nakedly:"I can only see the good in you...do you believe there's good in me? "A cloud of voices forms as the defences one puts up against society are cautiously lowered; now we are "unembarrassed and de-stigmatised". We feel safe, comfortable, and ready to begin. And so it begins;a volte-face into a thrilling electro-acoustic tapes try that lays out the predominant concern of the entire record--the closer you examine the meaning of things, the further away their true meaning gets.
The opening track on said record, the warped and awesome Murdered Arc Remains,it is an intricately constructed leap forward from the lo-fi chamber pop of Gemini Eye's 2013 debut album The Is Of Being. Structured more closely to the beginnings of an acid trip than any traditional verse-chorus-verse-chorus-fade, it explodes the components of a contemporary rock song, freezes them in mid-air, and zooms through the glittering fragments suspended in the fading autumn light.
Lyrically, The Devil is a suitable overture for a record filled with vulnerable protagonists, plagued by dark spirits beyond their comprehension. As the beat drops, the humans in this track become possessed, doomed to struggle with the infinite meanings and implications of their smallest actions. In the chorus, they fumble around for an explanation for what they have brought up on them selves-- "You tore a new one in the long day's heart...you fractured meaning in a way that can't be saved". Nothing will ever be the same, and there is no going back. This is a song about people toying with powerful new forces, and with The Devil,Gemini Eye has crafted a song that summons those forces in exquisite, vibrant detail.
The Hierophant
At a party, you see someone you know making new friends, and giving off the air of being more important than you know they actually are. The party gets going. Everyone’s getting into altered states.Your acquaintance is in the smoking are a holding forth to their new friends. They're talking nonsense. They're behaving like an idiot.You're drunk.You know you shouldn't say anything...The hierophant is traditionally a deeply holy figure, an interpreter of sacred mysteries.In a tarot deck, the hierophant card represents everything righteous ands acred, opportunities for learning, and the wisdom of tradition--characters the person in this song will never possess, no matter how hot they drink their Lucozade. But then, are you any better for confronting them?
With its bright, fuzzed out guitars, sampled choirs and scuzzy kitchen sink percussion, this is a warped party track for people who struggle at parties. It heats up into a reverberant confrontation, only to sli pblissfully into a next ended piano funk outrowith fragments of our protagonist’s voice at its most shrill and accusatory flickering in and out of memory.
Links:
Instagram: @whoops_uhoh
Twitter: @whoops_uhoh
Bandcamp: https://geminieye.bandcamp.com
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/geminieye
