One of my Top 5 albums in 2020 was IndiaBoy & Pesí B’s The Rise of India, which was released by an Icelandic micro-label called Top Cool Records. Top Cool is a subsidiary of the IndiaBoy Media Group, as is another label called Bulb Mind Records. This got me poking around in the Bulb Mind catalog, and before I knew it I had ordered copies of all the CDs on that imprint. One of Bulb Mind’s artists performs under the moniker Hewkii, the solo project of one Helgi Freyr Tómasson.
I’ve been infatuated by Hewkii’s latest release, Ecstasy Juice From God, which just arrived in my mailbox about two weeks ago, so I reached out to Helgi and asked if he’d be open to answering a few questions. Fortunately for me, he was!
Helgi, tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be a musician.
“My name is Helgi Freyr Tómasson, a 25-year-old man from Iceland. I was always drawn to music and started playing as young as six years old. I learned and studied guitar for multiple years and started producing electronic music at the age of 13, releasing my first single with Hewkii when I was 14 years old.”
How do you go about creating new music? What elements do you start with and how do your progress?
“I never start two songs the same way. I always start with a small element and then let it snowball into new territory. I never have a pre-planned idea of what I’m going to do, so it’s different every time.”
Your new album is called Ecstasy Juice From God, and it definitely brings an upbeat and happy energy. What inspired you to create this album?
“The name is partly a joke but also describes the feeling of the music very well, it is very juicy, ecstatic and divine. The album developed over four years and I was inspired to create something well-produced, clear, melodic and energetic with strong ambient influences.”
Your albums all have very distinct visual aesthetics in their artwork. How important is the artwork to your vision, and how do you collaborate with the visual artists?
“The artwork is always crucial to my music, I want it to reflect how the music makes you feel. In this instance I went further with it and had the ecstasy juice bottle itself creatred and had my friend Martin Bal, who also appears on the album, do some artwork around it.”
What are you listening to and enjoying these days? Who are the other artists we should check out?
“I LOVE Ozric Tentacles, Shpongle, but mostly these days I’ve been listening to ambient music (John Serrie, Hammock) and a little bit of Led Zeppelin on the side as a throwback to my roots in rock music.”
The title track opens with a brief soliloquy to set the mood before the synths come in, playfully bouncing back and forth across the stereo channels, the sonics bright and colorful. How much of my perception of this music is influenced by the word “ecstasy” appearing in the title? Anyone who tells you they can’t be affected in this way simply doesn’t understand the concept of the unconscious mind, and I certainly think it’s a possibility. But regardless, if there’s a word to describe Ecstasy Juice From God, it’s “joyful”. It’s music for a sunny day, or to make a gray day a little bit brighter.
“The Tryptamine Molecular Express” introduces an 80s synth vibe dancing over the brisk beats, a flute weaving in and out to add a touch of flavor and a pinch of Eastern mysticism. It’s easy to use a word like “vibe” when describing a song or an album, but Ecstasy is very vibe-driven – this is music with a mission, and that mission is to make you happy. The simple chord progressions on “Song of the Universe”, coupled with the swaying delivery of Vala Yates’ gossamer voice (it is the only vocal track on the album), are a soothing warm drink for the soul, putting a smile on your face as you move your head to the smooth vocal flow.
The album closes with “The Black Hole of Eternal Bliss”. Clocking in at almost 15 minutes, the intro slowly builds, deep beats emerging and then overlaid with buzzy synths. It’s the deepest the low end gets on Ecstasy Juice From God, creating a late-evening sensation that starts in South Beach Miami before jetting across to the ocean to Marrakesh. That is until the acid freakout kicks in, the synths taking on sharp edges, the beats punctuated with snapping snares on the measure’s final note. Oh, and did I mention the saxophone interlude as the track moves towards its finish, toward the end of the night? It’s a composition of seemingly disparate parts that come together, at least in my mind, as a story.
Hewkii’s tracks can be streamed on Spotify and elsewhere, but more importantly you can also check them out on his Bandcamp page HERE. Ecstasy Juice From God has also received the vinyl treatment, and both physical formats can be found there as can CD copies of his prior two Hewkii albums, The Galan Mind and The Cosmic Circus. If you like what you hear, show him some love and pick up a copy of one or all.