When An Earring Is A Galaxy gets quiet, it opens up the most. Miles Eichner homes in on the emotive core of these 10 songs, landing in unfamiliar zones and reimagining them into something enveloping. Sequences flit from left to right, almost as if they’re hovering in alternating peripheries, present and dissolving at once. Guitar patterns get deconstructed and looped into breathing foundations, giving Eichner a platform for modular synthesis that keeps pulling these sounds somewhere unexpected. The aural palette keeps shifting, but nothing feels arbitrary. It’s always cohesive, following a narrative throughline from beginning to end. This is music with real weight that never makes the weight felt. It’s easy to get into the space Eichner has built, but it’s a whole lot harder to get out.
An Earring Is A Galaxy is OUT NOW on Island House.
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What are some of your earliest memories of sound or music? When did you first start to feel like playing was something you needed to do?
A couple of years ago, I started playing the David Bowie-narrated version of Peter and the Wolf for my daughter, who was about 2 at the time. I’m not sure it’s my earliest memory of music, but it all came back to me so intensely as soon as I put it on. My parents played it for me when I was probably about that age, and it felt like all the little melodies had been sitting dormant deep in my brain. It all felt so familiar, even though I hadn’t heard it in probably 30+ years. Crazy experience. Who knows how these things work, but I wonder if it seeded in me an appreciation for sound, texture, timbre, etc.
I don’t think there was ever a moment where I realized I needed to play music (do I need to now? That’s a sort of existential path I’m not sure I want to venture down at the moment lol…). It’s more something that I just did because I liked it starting as a teenager, and just never really stopped. I don’t think I could ever have imagined my life without playing music at all, but I also never really had an active thought that it’s what I wanted my life to be about.
How did fingerpicking specifically become your main way of playing or your approach on the guitar? Was there a moment it clicked, or was it slower than that?
It’s funny, I actually don’t think of fingerpicking as my main approach to playing guitar. I’ve done and continue to do so much playing with other people, in band-type settings, and I’m not doing a lot of fingerpicking there. At some point, probably in my early twenties or so, I started teaching myself John Fahey tunes. Just learning by ear and figuring it out. I think I did that mostly because it was more fun than just noodling when I was sitting around by myself with a guitar. I honestly still don’t think I’m a very good fingerpicker, maybe I should take a lesson.
You’ve done a lot of work alongside other Colorado artists over the years, across some pretty different sounds. What does being a collaborator teach you that solo recording doesn’t?
This is going to sound corny, but I think my biggest lesson from so many years of working with so many different artists is that I can trust myself. I used to do more overthinking and worrying about how to fit in in each setting — oh, this is a country-ish band, I better brush up on my tele licks; oh, this is a more atmospheric thing, so I better soak it all in just the right reverb sound, etc. — and in hindsight, now that seems so self-defeating. Now I’m so much more comfortable just playing and trusting that it’ll get there. If the first rehearsal or early part of a session isn’t clicking, I don’t worry about it. It’ll get there.
Again, I really don’t think I’m a technically very good guitar player. But I think I’ve developed a broad sense of what sounds good, and to me, that’s more important. I guess this is the bottom line: the older I get, the more I feel like taste is the most important thing, and I trust mine at this point. Playing with so many different artists over the years certainly helped me get there, and that trust in myself is what I at least try to carry over to my solo work (some days I feel it more than others, of course).
Let’s talk a bit about the new record, An Earring Is A Galaxy. First, I’m curious what the story behind the name is? It’s really specific and cosmic at the same time. I love that…
I took an online songwriting course from Brian Eno last year, and he used that phrase (actually, it wasn’t exactly that; he didn’t use the word galaxy. It was something else that I can’t quite remember) to illustrate how any piece of art, no matter how big or small, is a world unto itself. I loved that idea so, so much. It’s sort of a remixing of the idea of being transported by a piece of art. Same general notion, but it feels more specific in a way. Each track is its own little world.
You described the realization that, as you were putting this album together, and you were gradually removing guitar pieces in favor of synth pieces, as “weird and somewhat confusing and distressing.” Can you talk about that a little bit more, and how it maybe pushed and challenged you as an artist?
Ha, yeah. I will say I was being at least a little facetious when I said that, though it’s not entirely without truth. I had always been a guitar player, still consider myself a guitar player, and had started making my own music, very much thinking of it as being in a lineage of solo guitar music. That hadn’t changed at all when I started making this record. I record something almost every day, so I always have a lot of little pieces to choose from, and so to have that moment of realization that I was continually gravitating less towards the “solo guitar” pieces and more towards the synth-heavy pieces really was kind of unmooring.
At what point did disorientation turn into something more like conviction, and knowing it was the right move, at least for this album?
At some point, I felt the sequencing and vibe of the record as a whole really taking shape once I stopped trying to force the guitar tracks in there and instead started just following my ears. I remember my wife and I taking a walk and half-jokingly telling her about my so-called existential crisis. That may have been the breakthrough moment. I guess I just had to get it off my chest?
During that winter period when you were making this album, what was it about the synths that kept pulling your attention away from the guitar? What were they doing that the guitar wasn’t?
I’m really trying not to say boredom, because that’s not it. I love playing guitar and am never bored of it. But learning modular synth, and particularly how it can pull weirdness out of the guitar, has been really exciting. It’s almost like having a newborn — at times complete torture, at times utter joy, new surprises every day. It’s funny, I think some people like modular because of the absolute precision and control you can have over sculpting sounds, but I’m almost the opposite. I love it because I truly never really know what’s going to come out of it each time I turn the rig on. Obviously, that has a lot to do with me still not really knowing what the hell I’m doing with it, but I prefer to keep it that way. Feels like the magic is in the surprise factor, and I think that’s why I kept returning to it.
The album still has an immersive, meditative quality that feels continuous with your earlier work, even though the instrumentation changed so much. Did that surprise you? Was there a moment you recognized the thread connecting it all?
No, that didn’t surprise me at all. I think there’s a sort of cosmic thread that runs through a lot of music that I love that’s wormed its way into my brain regardless of instrumentation. I think generally speaking, one instrument isn’t inherently more meditative than another. Take any given piece by John Fahey, Steve Reich, Bill Evans, Laraaji… entirely different sounds in terms of instrumentation and arrangement, but to me, all masters of creating a meditative sound.
The press description talks about an “inner logic” to the album’s sequence (which I agree with! I’m a big sequencing guy, so it always jumps out at me when a record flows and tells a story like this). How much of that was intentional from the start, and how much emerged from the material itself?
Oh, I’ve become more and more obsessed with sequencing. I’m always thinking about it as I’m recording — where will this go in the record, how would it fit before or after this other piece, etc. I really love listening to whole records when I can, and sequence is obviously such a big part of the experience. I think especially for music that’s not really “song” based, sequencing can be a huge part of communicating an overall emotional experience of a record. I’m actually pretty close to finishing up my next record now, but am stuck in sequencing hell lol… perhaps I’m too obsessed with it.
With the solo guitar records behind you and this album as this sort of rupture? Renewal? I don’t know, something like that… But where do you think your music is heading? Are there sounds or approaches you want to try that feel out of reach right now?
I definitely wouldn’t say a rupture. I’m sure I’ll make more straight-ahead guitar music again in the future, but right now I am diving deeper into the synth world. I think my next record will again be a mix, but probably even more synthy, and it’s going to have more influence from the Reich/Riley minimalist zone. You talked about meditative quality in my music before, and I think there’s a sort of cosmic thread connecting Fahey, Eno, and Reich.
And lastly, to close as always… What are some of your favorite sounds in the world?’
When I was 16 or 17, my dad took me to see Wilco at the 9:30 Club on the Ghost is Born tour. They opened with the first song on that record, and the guitar solo section on that song truly may have changed my life. It was this massive wall of fuzz and noise, and I remember thinking it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. In my mind, it still is to this day.
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