Jane Deasy is a composer and performer of experimental music. Deasy’s music is typically subtle, slow-moving, deep. Her rich, droning pieces are constructed through layers of analogue and digital synthesis, as well as abstracted field recordings and samples, and make use of unique microtonal tuning systems to create intricate textures and harmonies. The overall effect is both alien and beautiful, mysterious and generous, welcoming and overwhelming. 

Deasy repeatedly examines the points of intersection between live music performance and theatre. Opening Night, a multimedia installation and performance piece that won Best Design Award at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2022, begins as a live performance before becoming an eerie study of sound, staging, and selfhood. Found sounds and immersive drones, so familiar from her earlier work, here take on a different hue—what on tape seemed introspective and reserved now appears darker, more haunted, more formidable. Deasy’s careful sculpting of mood and tone expands until the room saturates, and something breaks.

At the heart of Deasy’s work is a dedication to focused, almost investigative listening, to a type of sonic excavation which peels back the layers of the familiar and unearths something previously inaudible, exposing hidden resonances and unexpected depths.

She has released two tapes, Mouth Of The Sound (2022) and Notes From The Bath (2020), on the Irish label Fort Evil Fruit, as well as the self-released EP, Thawing (2021).

text by Ian Maleney