Water is the debut album by Copenhagen based, composer, songwriter & producer Fie Eike. The album explores the existential and emotional wisdom of water for healing and transformation. It is a sonic tale about assuming form as an individual through a deep connection to the nature of water and oceans.
Fie Eike has Norwegian roots but was born and raised in Denmark. The memories of Nordic nature from the Danish forest where she grew up, and the Norwegian fjords and mountain landscapes where she spent her childhood summers, have instilled a deep spiritual connection to nature that serves as a distinct atmospheric backdrop of the album soundscape.
The 12 track album consists of 7 songs, 3 instrumental compositions and 2 vocal works. The soundscape is melodic, atmospheric, soft and powerful with contrasts of darkness and light, melancholy and hope. The compositions are built around Eike’s powerful yet fragile vocal with great emotional depth, piano, electronic textures and rhythms, warped piano sounds and field recordings of water and the ocean from different locations across Denmark.
Within this realm, Fie Eike tells a sonic tale about standing on the shore looking out onto the great depths of the ocean, as a symbol of the subconscious, knowing that the only way to heal, transform and emerge as a free and true expression of oneself, is to venture into the unknown and to explore and inhabit all of our feelings and underlying motivations and fears. To let the water wash away everything that is no longer needed, in order to move from a state of fluidity to assuming form. Exploring the place where true connection, love, light and creation begins.
“Only the water will set me free”, Fie Eike sings acapella on the album’s opening track “Free” and continues a sonic journey into the depths of the water exploring the wide range of emotions like fear, grief and melancholy that are slowly dissolved with surrendering vulnerability and hope before resurfacing and assuming form with the album’s final tracks ‘Omrids’ and ‘Omrids II’. ‘Omrids’ means outline in Danish. In this way, the album chronology explores the process of moving from a state of fluidity to assuming form as an individual, with a clear outline and true expression that connects and shapes us and our surroundings, inspired by how the waves shape the coastline over time, leaving patterns of its outlines in the sand.
Water is fundamental to all life as we know it. According to Fie, water and the oceans offer profound emotional and existential wisdom, as the water and ocean mirrors many of the patterns, dynamics and contrasts that define our lives.
“Water represents both movement and stillness. It is powerful and destructive, yet quiet and healing. It is life giving and revitalizing, yet restrictive, destructive and life-threatening at the same time. It is subtle, yet extreme, weak and fluid, yet powerful and agile, transparent and light, yet muddy and dark, infinite, yet limiting, reserved and hidden, yet curious and transformational, soft and caring, yet violently temperamental, Fie explains and continues: “The waves of the ocean are like a breath constantly shaping and changing its surroundings and the coastline, while instilling balance, peace and anchoring us in the present moment, while reminding us of the cyclical nature of life and our connectedness and dependency on nature and each other.”
According to Fie, we can only heal, transform and assume a clear form and authentic self expression when we dare to dive into the depths to face and make conscious our deepest fears and hidden motivations.
“We must allow ourselves to surrender and be able to hold space for darkness and our most challenging emotions in order to heal and transform. The movements on the surface of the ocean reflect what happens below, just like we as humans affect and impact our surroundings. The ocean teaches us that we cannot only insist on living on the surface nor in the depths alone. We must hold both darkness and light, and dare to really feel and inhabit our full range of emotions including the most difficult ones. Because when we expand our capacity for darkness, we also expand our capacity for light, love and joy. – In the end, there is no light without darkness, and no love without fear”, Fie explains.
Fie worked on the album that she has written, produced and mixed in its entirety, for almost 4 years. During this process, she spent a lot of time by the North Sea on the North West Coast of Denmark, especially during lockdown, where she started studying and documenting the movements of the ocean, its traces and lines in the sand and shaping of the coastline through photography, video and sound recordings, and had a feeling of merging with nature and the vast open landscapes as melodies and songs started to emerge.
“From these subconscious creative practices came an exploration and conversation with nature. As I listened and observed, I started recognising my own human nature in my interactions with nature. I suddenly felt like I was part of my surroundings and not separate from them, and it felt like space and time completely dissolved. A strong sense of connectedness emerged, that I recognised from experiences in nature during my childhood, in the forest and from the landscapes of Norway where I spent my summers growing up,” Fie explains.
According to Fie, experiences of deep emotional connection to nature may hold part of the key to inspiring greater care for both human and natural resources in the future:
“Music and art speaks the language of emotions. Therefore it can give us access to an immediate emotional experience of connectedness to nature. I believe that this kind of deeply experienced emotional connection to nature can inform a more meaningful connection to ourselves and our surroundings, as opposed to one that is purely cognitive or based on facts. At the same time, I think it is paramount for motivating greater care for both natural and human resources in the future”, Fie explains.
In support of her album release, Fie Eike is planning a series of immersive concerts integrating experiences of music and nature, offering the listener a space for reflection and inner journey for example through combining music with walks in nature integrating video installations and tactile elements informed by nature.
The first singles from Fie Eike’s debut album have garnered attention from prominent Danish and International tastemakers such as The Line of Best Fit, Earmilk, Notion, Atwood Magazine Bands of Tomorrow, Danish National Radio DR P2 and Norway’s ballade.no.
Water is out now, by Fie Eike (Distribution: IT-Sounds/Believe Germany). The album has received support from KODA Kultur, Danish Musicians’ Union and the Danish Artist Association.
You can connect with Fie Eike through website www.fieeike.com, Instagram @fieeike, and Facebook