Photo Essay: Behind the Music
I want to capture atmospheres — ephemeral moments and places in time.
I'm a street photographer, and I make ambient soundscapes that use field recordings I make in the wild — trains, birds, rivers, people on the street. I often take photos and record with a tiny microphone at the same time. Photography and music as art practices for me come from the same impulse: I want to capture atmospheres, ephemeral moments and places in time. I have a professional background in design (graphic, UI, motion, sound) and my song covers are one of the places where I can bring my creative soul fully to bear to tell a story. Here is the "behind the music" of my songs and their cover art.
Tokyo Metro
2022
Tribute I made to one of my favorite cities in the world while Japan was still closed to travel during the pandemic. Prior to 2020, I'd been visiting almost every year since 2012.
I only started making field recordings and soundscapes in 2022, so for this track I stripped the audio from iPhone videos I'd made on earlier visits.
It includes a Tokyo Metro voice announcement, trains on tracks, and ambient street noise of people walking by at a major street crossing, including wonderful laughter.
Photo: Tokyo, Japan. Fuji X70 / 2017.
Sequin
2023
Recorded and produced on a dark winter night in 2023 using only my Arturia Microfreak synthesizer, a microphone, and my iPad.
Bainbridge Island where I made this has beautifully dark and inky skies, and I wanted to capture that with this track. I miss that home very much, and this song takes me there.
Photo is the ceiling of my favorite pub in the world, Bainbridge Brewing Alehouse on Winslow Way.
This is my top track on Spotify.
Photo: Bainbridge Island, Washington USA. Ricoh GRIII / 2022.
Ferry on the Salish Sea (Wenatchee Love)
2022
Love letter to the beautiful Salish Sea and Puget Sound around my long-time home of Seattle, Washington.
I moved to Bainbridge Island from Seattle in 2020, a forested island connected to a major U.S. city by Washington State Ferries across a dreamy sea.
M/V Wenatchee (no longer in service) is the largest of these and my favorite. Sound recordings on this track include an on-board safety announcement and lapping waves against the ship.
This is a self-portrait taken from the front ship deck facing inside the ferry. I'd just cut my own hair very short and it was the first trip I took back to Seattle to see friends after peak pandemic, and to stop by the office for the last time just before I left my job of 10 years.
Photo: Seattle, Washington USA. Ricoh GRIII / 2021.
Solstice 22 (Snow Crash)
2022
Recorded and produced entirely on the evening of winter solstice December 21, 2022 on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Sounds on this track were recorded at home and include my beloved wind chimes + the incredibly lucky recording of a sheet of snow sliding off the roof and crashing onto the ground.
"Snow Crash" is also the title of one of the top books I've ever read, a sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson in 1992 about metaverses. Cyberpunk + ambient drone music are a good match.
Photo is snow on the ground under a pine tree in nearby Moritani Preserve forest, taken the same week. I love the yin-yang effect of the black and white.
Photo: Bainbridge Island, Washington USA. Ricoh GRIII / 2022.
Pachibel's Pacific
2022
I consider myself a sound artist or designer, not a musician. I've never studied a traditional instrument, and my artistic relationship to music is of a more lyric nature, via studying ballet and flamenco. Nevertheless, I like to play with chord progressions on my forgiving synth, and on this track I was inspired by Pachelbel's Canon — via a darkly optimistic and atonal mood.
Field recordings on this track are: dreamy Pacific Northwest rain on leaves, a car driving by on a wet street, and morning birds outside of my home.
Cover art is shadows of an oak tree in late afternoon as seen through my frosted glass front door.
Photo: Bainbridge Island, Washington USA. Ricoh GRIII / 2022.
Equinox
2023
Equinox is strange and moody little composition for Spring Equinox. I used this as the soundtrack for my short film Komorebi 木漏れ日 (2024).
Spring Equinox, the moment when winter turns to spring, is pure magic to me. It’s considered the true start of the year in many cultures and I agree. Spring is my season — I adore cherry blossoms and the explosion of glorious PINK! Believe it or not, I take a lot of pretty pink photos :) (and published a pretty pink cocktail book).
I also adore the unexpected world of “sakura noir” — their dramatic cloud-like silhouettes in light against night skies. This cover art is flowers near a street lamp on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Photo: Bainbridge Island, Washington USA. Ricoh GRIII / 2023.
Listen on Spotify
Liminal by The Kaitain Slip ft. JIRU
2022
This one is a little different.
This beautiful track is by the excellent The Kaitain Slip, featuring my field recordings and cover art (as JIRU). It was a joy working with this artist, and this project is what inspired me to start making my own soundscapes.
The other photos in this series were used straight out of the camera, but for this one I distorted the original imageto give it a glitched and surreal sort of feel. It already had some organic distortion, being a reflection of trees in the water.
TKS described it in 2022 on its release: "When I heard Jill's field recordings, I was instantly transported. This soundscape is a manipulation of these recordings of rain, windchimes, and atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest recorded on Bainbridge Island floating over gentle, warm tones. Put on headphones and drift."
Photo: Bainbridge Island, Washington USA. Fuji X-Pro3 / 2022.
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Published December 9, 2024.