Drawing comparisons with the likes of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Leonard Cohen, ‘Quiet Hours’ is the solo project of Julie Hampton, performing under the name of Electra Day.
The project consists of two albums, the first released in August this year, while the second will be out in 2017. After college, Julie travelled all around the USA and lived in many places including Colorado, California, Washington, and Oregon. She then took her travels to Europe, and lived in Germany for twelve years, teaching English as a second language, editing, and working as a German to English translator. During the last four years of her stay there, she started writing poetry, and when she bought a guitar and learned to play, she began writing songs.
“I started writing songs in 2004 after improvement in my health provided the space, energy and inspiration for it. Before turning to songs I had occasionally been writing poems and stories since college days, during which time I studied English literature, with a particular interest in poetry.”
From Berlin she moved to the Mojave Desert, thence to the Gulf Islands off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, followed by the High Sierra Desert of New Mexico, and finally to the Midwest of the USA, Fairfield Iowa, where she lives today. The nine songs on the album are of a mostly reflective nature, mirroring the quiet and subtle mixing of the landscapes she was moving through at the time – both interior and exterior.
The story behind her pseudonym is an interesting one:
“The name Electra Day is a name I have been using for my own personal writings since college days when I learned that my parents were going to give me this name but then chose Julie instead. When we were designing the album cover, I thought it looked very nice on the cover and decided to keep it there. Recently, I have learned that Electra Day was actually my great-grandmother.”
‘Quiet Hours’ is available from Electra Day’s Bandcamp site. You can find out more about her from her official website, and Facebook.