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INTERVIEW: James Bright & Gaeya
- Chromatic Club
- 9 abr
- 5 Min. de lectura
James Bright and Gaeya invite us into a world where sound becomes space — and space becomes feeling. Their collaborative project, Imaginal, is not just an album, but a passage into imagined landscapes: vivid, delicate, and deeply restorative.
From the opening track, where Gaeya’s airy vocals rise and fall like breath over James’s intricate, glowing loops, the music gently dissolves the boundary between the real and the dreamlike. Stillness, with its sweeping arpeggios and hushed melodic threads, feels less like a song and more like a state of being.
In this interview, we join James and Gaeya to uncover the roots of their sonic world-building — exploring how music can shape inner geographies, and how creating from a place of presence can lead listeners to their own quiet revelations.
Gaeya /both: ambient-electronica seems to be a perfect genre for evoking emotions. Can you describe the moment when you first collaborated with James Bright? What was that first spark?
James: As soon as I heard Gaeya voice I knew that I wanted to work with her. She has such a unique beautiful tone.
Gaeya: Cadence and Stillness were actually the first songs we collaborated on, and also my first encounter with James’s beautiful music. For me, it felt like a perfect match. James weaves such a rich, atmospheric web of sound, and it immediately brought me into alignment with the natural flow of creation.
It’s been such a joy to work together. I felt an instant connection and creative spark when James sent me those two tracks. It made it so easy to step into the space and surf the language already being spoken through his music—and to simply pick up the thread from there.
Gaeya: The track 'Cadence' is quite hypnotic. What inspired the vocal delivery in that particular song, and how did you create such a mesmerizing atmosphere with your voice?
Gaeya: Thank you for that. With Cadence, the music really brought back memories of being in a rainforest or of my time in Peru. I felt as though I was wandering through a place alive with colour, movement, and the rhythm of life itself. I naturally found myself moving through this forest, trying to express the wonder and power I felt from that place. And once I was in it, I wanted to offer the listener the experience of becoming that place themselves—like being transported into a story passed down from our ancestors.
Gaeya: Your vocals sit beautifully within the tracks 'Cadence' and 'Stillness’ and the grainy atmospheres of the album Imaginal. How do you make sure your voice doesn't get lost within such intricate soundscapes?
Gaeya :What I find most beautiful about the songs James invited me to collaborate on is how he’s created a complete atmosphere—a world you can step into. It offers me the space, through my voice, to interpret, to uncover the stories that want to be told, and to move freely above it all, allowing intuition to guide where the music naturally wants to go.
This particular way of singing is also a deliberate intention—to reach the listener beyond the conventional, to speak directly to the stories we carry deep within our DNA. It’s about awakening a sense of curiosity through sounds that are inspired by the Earth herself and the deep power she holds.
James: In Surface Tension, there’s a noticeable push of energy waves with the bass and synth. How do you approach the contrast between the organic and the more forceful electronic elements?
James: I think it’s good to have contrasting elements in music, light and shade. That way you can tell more of a story. It’s all about shaping sounds or order to fit a feeling.
James: ‘Bioluminal’ feels like it’s floating in space—serene but vast. What was the inspiration behind this track?
James: Bioluminal was written while watching footage filmed about the creatures that live in the very deepest parts of the ocean. The Bioluminescent light they produce through chemical reactions in their bodies is really beautiful to watch in the dark depths.
Gaeya: James Bright is known for his ambient-electronica style, but there’s an emotional depth in your performance. How do you infuse your vocals with such raw emotion while maintaining a calm, reflective tone?
Gaeya I think it always comes back to balance. Just like in nature—when you listen to the breath of the wind, you’ll hear the big howls followed by smaller, more delicate nudges that keep the energy moving, while the larger gust gathers strength once again. The same rhythm happens with waves: the largest is often said to be the seventh, preceded and followed by smaller ones.
For me, it’s about allowing that ebb and flow to find its way—creating as much balance as possible, while also taking routes that transport the listener to unseen, and sometimes unexpected, places.
Both: Many listeners associate your music with introspection. Do you think this genre allows people to connect to themselves more deeply, and how does your own journey reflect in the music?
James: I definitely think that music is a powerful medium that can evoke a whole host of experiences for listeners. It can connect with emotions, physically and spiritually. I think any creative artist has a vison or a personal feeling for their work but the beauty of any art form is that it can provoke different experiences for each individual. The names for the songs on the album have personal meanings for me but I like to think that anyone listening to the music will have their own unique interpretations.
Gaeya: I definitely think so. For me, music—and perhaps this genre or form of expression in particular—allows me to dive deeper into self-reflection, bypassing the mind and instead creating directly from the heart.
It helps me create in a way that feels deeply authentic to who I am, and at times, it takes me to places that are difficult to access through the mind alone. In a spiritual and ethereal sense, it becomes a direct link to explore the inner world and the life around us—through a lens that feels more healing, more expansive, and constantly evolving.
Both: what´s next for you as artists together or solo?
James: James: I’m in the studio, writing every day and will have some new tracks finished very soon. I’m also collaborating on some new material with Japanese artist Yumi Iwaki which I’m really excited about. Hopefully there will be some more songs with Gaeya very soon as well.
Gaeya: At the end of the month, I’ll be traveling back to the U.S. to play shows in Denver, CO. And in early May, I’m releasing the first track, “Higher Ground,” from my upcoming EP Growth—the second release in a trilogy of EPs exploring human evolution through the lens of a paradigm shift.
I’m also relaunching my sustainability podcast TellUs, and working on some exciting new projects in both the U.S. and Europe—more to be revealed soon, and I truly can’t wait to share them.
It’s been such a joy collaborating with James, and we’ve been talking about how fun it would be to work on more projects together. There’s nothing to reveal just yet—but who knows, maybe soon.
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