Here, When

Friday June 28th marks the release of OONA’s debut offering, featuring our Series format. Entitled Here, When, this first release is a compilation of songs from eleven different artists, inspired by text from the author Pico Iyer and paired with art from visual artist Martina Hoogland-Ivanow.

Here, When explores the idea of space and distance. It is no secret that this day in age we are presented with an extreme, constant flood of stimuli and information. Time is a scarce commodity — creating such time, space, and distance from our illusions and realities to process, feel, and digest them is a luxury. In the words of Pico Iyer, “We are extracting meaning only when we have distance from our experiences to process or experience them.” OONA’s debut release is an attempt to create that space for the listener, an open-ended invitation to fill this space with their individual needs, feelings, and desires.

As a multidisciplinary undertaking, OONA is an inviting and inclusive space. Not your conventional record label. Jacob explains it best. “What we are building with OONA is an independent, humanistic, artist-driven label with non linear thinking; a home for composers and artists creating instrumental, experimental, and non-genre based music.”

We wish to present music in an alternative manner, to approach the format and content of releases from a more immersive angle. We are interested in connecting and exploring parallel narratives between art and artforms. We seek to uncover the languages spoken in the spaces between music, visual arts, text, and poetry. By connecting and presenting these diverse expressions together in new combinations and contexts, we set out to create a richer experiences for anyone who enters the world of OONA.

All of our releases will contain both visual and written elements. A short film or poem may be the starting point for a recording, a group of songs may influence and provide context to an image, or vice versa. We believe in challenging the idea of a leading narrative, and that any one medium can be the starting point for another, resulting in a cohesive, holistic release. At the very least we aim to offer the consumer an alternative, and offer the opportunity to explore ‘playlisting’ and ‘thematics’ from a different perspective. That and allow artists and artforms an open space to connect and experiment with expressions.