Sight Below, The

The reclusive Seattle-based artist known as The Sight Below stays away from the spotlight—instead, he expresses himself through melancholic, slow-moving musical forms.



The music of The Sight Below conjures half-remembered dreams and soft-focus sentiments with elegiac beauty; his video art works similarly, blurring snippets of film until they’re recognizable only as organic objects: black-and-white amoebas milling about, or a sunset rendered in grayscale.



All of The Sight Below’s songs are performed live: The artist runs E-bowed, slide, and lightly picked guitars through a series of loopers, 12-bit reverb boxes, and delay units, kneading and distending the notes until they drone like bees in a tunnel or keen like an orchestra of singing saws. The resulting swirl is pinned to propulsive, achingly subtle electronic percussion, which guides the listener through the gloom towards the music’s hopeful center. The resulting ambient works seem as effortless as natural phenomena; in fact, they’re carefully played, head-nodding hymns to the artist’s solitary life.



Glider and its accompanying No Place for Us EP, The Sight Below’s 2008 debut releases on Ghostly International, were well-received in ambient circles and in the music world at large, gaining plaudits from international publications and musicians (including Radiohead’s Thom Yorke). The Sight Below spent the year touring the world, playing a slate of successful shows at DEMF, MUTEK, and SONAR, and collaborating extensively with the legendary Slowdive’s drummer Simon Scott. The Sight Below is currently working on new material with Scott for a future release.