Interview: Phantom Eye

 [This interview originally appeared in GAD! issue 32.]

Phantom Eye is Jesse Norris’ (TOWU, Lighthouse, Tiger Helicide) pseudonymous solo music project. Interview by Harmless.

GAD!: How long have ya been making music?

PE: I’ve been playing music on and off for basically my entire life. My first band where we played originals was active in the early to mid 2010’s. I pretty much stopped playing music from 2014 to 2018. In late 2018, my first like “real band” formed. That was TOWU with my friends Eli and Nick. I’ve been making music constantly ever since.

GAD!: Who are your greatest musical influences?

PE: For where this project is currently, I’m super influenced by the works of Alex Zhang Hungtai, especially what he released under the Dirty Beaches moniker.

GAD!: What were the influences behind the initial Phantom Eye release? Musical and otherwise.

PE: The first Phantom Eye release was the single We Did Our Best from the 2023 EP that came right after. For that stuff I guess I could say I was influenced by my usuals like The Strokes and New Order, but I definitely took inspiration from Current Joys in the sense that every song starts with a loop that continues throughout. And the songs just build on top of that the whole time. The music video for We Did Our Best is also inspired by the work of Nick Rattigan aka Current Joys.

GAD!: What makes a song a Phantom Eye song vs a prospective Lighthouse tune?

PE: Initially, there was no synthesizer in Lighthouse. It was mostly a guitar band and I’d occasionally switch to the Vox Organ I’d bought around the time we started the band. Since we’ve added the synth player to the lineup, things have changed a bit. Phantom Eye has kinda shifted to this vintage movie soundtrack style. A lot of the new songs sample old music or just sound like something you’d hear in an old movie. Also, every Phantom Eye song since the l’eprueve de la vie EP forward has a correlating video that’s projected onto a screen when I play live.

GAD!: When you decided to start playing the material live, what were the biggest hurdles?

PE: I think that working out the projector screen was the hardest part, but mapping everything out with the backing tracks on the loop pedal was a lot of effort at first.

GAD!: Who plays with Phantom Eye live?

PE: Right now, I mostly perform solo as Phantom Eye. Occasionally, someone will join me for a song or two, but a full live band is something I’m gonna work out sometime next year. [Phantom Eye has since performed live as a
full band and has been very well received! -ed.]

GAD!: When you first recorded as Phantom Eye, did you think it would be a one-off project, or did you know then that you would continue with it?

PE: When I first started recording as Phantom Eye, it was actually the only musical outlet, besides playing guitar at the occasional Tiger Helicide gig, that I had. Phantom Eye started right as we were playing our last shows as TOWU, and it was initially my attempt at making more pop-sounding music as opposed to the art rock TOWU had been playing.

 GAD!: What gear do you use to pull off the live performance?

 PE: I use my Fender Player II Strat running through my twin reverb amp for guitar. I run loops from my BOSS RC3 into an Ampeg solid State amp. For keys, I use a Roland RS-09 through my twin.

 GAD!: When recording Phantom Eye, do you consider how you'll recreate it in a live setting?

 PE: I don’t ever think about how I’ll do it live ahead of time, but I should.

 GAD!: How “organic” is your writing process? Do you generally plot out a song or does it flow?

 PE: I usually just write the Phantom Eye songs as I’m writing them. So more of a flow type of thing.

 GAD!: Do you always write lyrics specifically for the music (and vice versa) or do you come up with the lyrics and save them for when you have an idea?

 PE: I come up with lyrics and save them for when they’ll fit an instrumental I make.

 GAD!: Thanks! Can’t wait to hear what you have in store for us in the future!

Phantom Eye on Bandcamp!