Stereo Embers’ TRACK OF THE DAY: Electra Day’s “Big Sky”

Written by: Jen Dan

Electra Day is the name that New York-born folk artist Julie Hampton goes by for her new music project, The Quiet Hours. Day recently released the first installment in a series of song collections that reflect the spiritual and emotional depth and meaning of Day’s world travels (an 11-year journey that took her from Berlin, Germany to the Mojave desert, British Columbia, New Mexico, and currently the US Midwest).

Titled Quiet Hours, it features 9 folk songs that place an emphasis on Day’s lyrics, voice, and guitar-playing. Day started writing songs and playing guitar while living in Germany and she continued to write her poems and stories during her voyages around the globe. With Quiet Hours, she has now set her impressions, which mirror her inner and outer landscapes, to music.

Lead single “Big Sky” is Day’s tribute to nature and her childhood. She categorizes the song as “deep folk”, a blend of traditional folk and a meditative style that is similar to New Age music philosophy. The listener is meant to relax and reflect while spinning Day’s music and “Big Sky” follows this format.

Day sings with a contemplative, sonorous, drawn out delivery over a gentle play of guitar strings. She peers back in time when, “I was a child / laying on my back / in the soft green grass / looking at the open sky.” Unhurried in pace, Day’s words hang in the air amid the mild accompaniment of lower and lighter-register picked guitar notes.