The setting sun signifies the fundamental shift between the diurnal and nocturnal worlds, bringing to mind what is perhaps the most rudimentary example of a binary opposition: that of light and darkness. As ancient peoples from across the globe watched the sun disappear into the night sky, they contemplated their own mortality, and with it, their relationship with the unknown. These primal mysteries found their way into the mythologies surrounding the movement of the sun, or solar cycle, in attempt to consciously reconcile the unknown in nature—and in ourselves—with our human experience. Enter The Night Sea.

The Night Sea is a metaphor for the unconscious. On a psychological level, the sun’s movement into and out of darkness mirrors our own transition into and out of the unconscious realm, as happens with sleep, trauma, depression, and perhaps even death. Creative expression, likewise, necessitates movement from the conscious mind into (and out of) the realm of the unconscious. C. G. Jung fittingly describes the unconscious as “the psychological reservoir of the artist”. Solar cycle and underworld mythologies can illuminate the collectively vital qualities of artistic expression, and furthermore inform a methodological artistic framework that embraces the depth psychological, ritual and archetypal aspects present in the mythic journey. The Night Sea is an artistic ritual of applied philosophy, a mythological methodology akin to active imagination, that collectively holds the tension of the opposites and allows a third, non-dualistic, creative element to regeneratively emerge.

The rotating cast of musicians that is The Night Sea includes players from The Lemonheads, Airto Moreira, The Eels, Earlimart, Spain, Dengue Fever, Nels Cline, The Kooks, K.D. Lang, M83, and The Watson Twins, to name a few.