Behind The Tracks: North Atlas - Hymn To The Sun (Double Single) (2025)

In the hyperactive age of the instant. accessible, we very rarely allow ourselves a shared moment of experience. We barely even look up from our phones to watch TV together, let alone appreciate the sunrise. This music was made to remind us to get out there, put on your headphones and appreciate the power of nature…and to try and remind us of the importance of shared experience.”

 

‘Hymn To The Sun’ is, as drummer and producer Cam Hunter explains, “a reimagining of the mythological Gaelic ‘Song of Amergin’. The original bard-song is a toast to the writer's connection with nature, and it’s made-up of these references to animism, that’s the notion that something powerful and important is contained there in everyday things and people and places. We wanted to bring the sun's power into this music, and it sort of waxes and wanes, slow, but huge and imposing at its most intense, just like the sun on its path”

 

The release day was such an event. There was an excitement among the community which surrounds the band, I hadn't quite expected that. We decided to synchronise the launch of the songs with natural time-based events (sunrise, sunset) and it forced us out of our comfort zone, at 4am, literally, our beds. We accepted that and synchronised with the rhythms of a particular place in the world. We are inspired by place & a connection to it.

 

With the fact that so many joined us for the launch live-streams, and went out into nature to listen to the songs on their headphone, we feel like it recaptured a type of shared experience that people don't feel much nowadays. For me, it gets to the core of what music is about, bringing people together, very simply.