Eve Maret has been a fantastically inventive contributor to Nashville music, especially the electronic music scene hereabouts. Since the mid-2010s, she’s been making connections between our scene and those elsewhere, co-founding the Hyasynth House collective in an effort to make the electronic music world more welcoming for everyone and making intriguing electronic music that draws on exploring the lines between what grows organically and what’s been shaped by human action.
Over time, Maret’s music has shifted focus away from a sort of post-punk synth-pop toward more flowing, celestial textures. She’s also increasingly brought other media into the mix. The virtual release party for her early 2021 improvisational record The Zone was its own kind of multisensory experience, and she and longtime collaborator Dream Chambers recently performed a live electronic score to the classic silent film Nosferatu for a sold-out audience at the Belcourt. She and her partner, visual artist David Onri Anderson, have also opened up a multimedia gallery called Electric Shed that we recognized as the Best Backyard Gallery in our Best of Nashville issue.
Maret seems to be constantly creating and releasing new music, whether it’s in the form of a traditional album or not. Today, she’ll release a collection of pieces recorded between April 2019 and October 2021 as Earth and Space. It’s the sixth installment of the Altered States series, a collaborative project of Nashville’s Centripetal Force Records (which also got a nod in our Best of Nashville issue as Best Indie Label) and Cardinal Fuzz.
One of the six pieces is “H2O,” an original electronic composition that’s part of another film scoring project. In 2019, Maret and friends from the extended Hyasynth House crew performed a program called Sci-Lent Cinema at the Belcourt, part of the theater’s Science on Screen series, in which they wrote new music for silent science- and sci-fi-themed short films. Maret scored a 1929 short by Ralph Steiner, also called “H2O,” that reflects (no pun intended) on how light interacts with water. It’s a choice that rhymes with one of the big themes in Maret’s art — Steiner explored how a piece of technology might tell us something new about the natural world.
Today, we’re very pleased to premiere a video of the track and the film synced up. Take a look above, and stream or buy the album in your choice of formats via Bandcamp — note that a special vinyl edition, limited to 100 copies, is in the works and will be made available in 2023. Also keep an eye on Maret’s Instagram profile for updates. She’s performing Friday night, Nov. 11, at Electric Shed to celebrate the release. Dream Chambers, Proteins of Magic and Rafa will also play; the cover is $5 and the show starts at 8 p.m.
