Erik Eimiller didn’t even have to get out of bed to write his new single Cross the Ocean — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
“It was an amazing dream,” the rocker and multi-instrumentalist says, recalling the night he created the paranoid-fuelled, ’80s-style new wave number. “Vivid. Palpable. It was like a full-on music video. The singer was running towards the camera, and running away from something terrifying, whatever it was, that was chasing him. The chorus for what would become Cross the Ocean was blasting inside my subconsciousness, and the chord progression and melody line were ingrained in my mind as I awoke. I quickly grabbed my phone and recorded a voice message, humming the vocal line while clicking my teeth to the beat. I couldn’t quite remember all of the words, but I had what I needed.”
With much of the track locked in, the only elements remaining were the verses. Enter: COVID-19. “A month after this dream, the pandemic strikes our world and the media coverage, naturally, is non-stop. Just 24/7, every news channel, every radio station… It’s just about impossible to block out.”
It was here that Eimiller — a life-long accomplished musician who’s played thousands of stages as a drummer — took a step to the side, observing the happenings from an empathetic and storytelling perspective, as he aims to do in his richly descriptive songwriting. “The coverage started to consume some people to the point of paranoia. I feel for those people because I understand that fear is real. Perhaps the only solution would be to ‘run away from the television’ because ‘you’ve got time to make yourself feel right’ — which is the chorus of the single. Once I realized the fear, the verses hit me like a ton of bricks.”
The video for Cross the Ocean serves as the perfect complement, and weaves the storyline and vibe together with striking visuals, colour processing, and overall mood. This, of course, is by no accident. “My sister Amy created the video, and she harnessed that nostalgic, yet futuristic feel with perfection,” Eimiller says of the song’s visual representation.
Watch Cross the Ocean above, and learn more about Erik Eimiller on his website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
