The Big Sonic Heaven 7 – All Eyes

The Big Sonic Heaven 7 is 7 questions we ask our favorite bands.
This time we asked All Eyes…

1. Where are you from/based?
Minneapolis, Minnesota.

2. Give us a brief history of the band.
Alicia and I started dating right as she began recording “Shelf Life” in 2011. She’d recorded six albums previously under her own name, but with a turn toward darker, more atmospheric, and more electronic-influenced music, she decided to rename the project All Eyes. Alicia wrote all the music for “Shelf Life,” but the production and arrangement process was a full band + producer effort. The year after we released that album (2012) brought some big changes. We got married, settled down, and had our first little one. Music took a back seat for a while. However, we were sitting on several songs Alicia wrote right after releasing “Shelf Life,” which became “Change.” We recorded that one at home, on and off, from 2012-2019. Part of what took so long was that we needed to accumulate enough home studio gear to do everything DIY, and part of it was simply being busy with other things. We knew we wanted to finish the music, so we pushed hard and finally released Change in February 2020. The pandemic hit right after, so we dove into writing brand new material, which we started recording and mixing as we went. Those songs became “Daystar,” which we just released in September 2021. We finished it back in January of this year, but we wanted to explore releasing tracks as singles to build some anticipation. We’re thinking we’ll revisit the full band sound again for our next album, but we’re taking a little more time between “Daystar” and whatever that work will be.

3. What are your influences and/or describe your sound.
We love the mood of everything David Lynch does. His vibe has always been a big influence on our approach. We also love a lot of late 90s UK music, as well as the shoegaze and dreampop classics. We say our stuff is dark dreamgaze indie rock, but you’ll hear R&B, film scoring, and jazz influences in there, too.

4. What is your current release? Tell us about it.
We wrote “Daystar” while we were staying at home during COVID. We were both fortunate to keep our day jobs and work from home, but we’d get restless at night and on the weekends, so the music just kept coming. It was a pretty bleak time, and still is in some ways. But we’ve got two little ones, and despite exploring some darker sounds, we wanted some optimism to shine through. Being at home gave us plenty of time to try several approaches to each song, so we kept a more experimental attitude throughout the production process.

5. Tell us something funny or shocking about the band.
This isn’t exactly funny or shocking, but we’re married and have recorded our last two albums in our condo in Minneapolis. It’s a challenge trying to get the right vocal takes after the kids go to sleep, and I have to wait to do guitars Saturday and Sunday afternoons so that nobody cares about the volume (sorry neighbors).

6. What’s the best thing about being in a band?
For as many disagreements as we have, it’s pretty amazing to work with my super talented wife on this music. To us, this is the best side hustle we can think of, and since we’re entirely independent, we can take risks and make music that we love without any outside interference.

7. What’s next? Are you touring?
We’re taking a little recording break, but we’ve got at least a dozen songs that we could record tomorrow if we wanted to. For our next project, we’d like to return to a legit recording studio and bring in some more players, so we’re thinking about production approaches and trying to come up with the right tonal soundscape to capture.

Darren Revell
Big Sonic Heaven Radio

Big Sonic Heaven is a 24/7 Internet radio station dedicated to the ethereal sounds of shoegaze, dream pop, post-punk, trip-hop, etc. Listen to the artists featured on the blog and discover more by downloading the app for iPhone and Android or listen at bigsonicheaven.com.