Emptyself

Emptyself is hauntingly beautiful music from New Orleans-based artist/producer Eric Johanson (see Cire), featuring lush acoustic guitars, trip-hop and industrial beats, and emotionally revealing lyrics. Fans of Portishead, A Perfect Circle, Massive Attack, Zero 7, and Nine Inch Nails should give Emptyself a listen. Emptyself's self-titled debut CD was released 5/27/05, and is now available from GenomeRecords.com.

Eric began playing guitar at age 5, and was recording his own original rock projects by the ripe old age of 12. At 13 he was assisting in a commercial recording studio, learning the production and mixing techniques that would ultimately lead to the intense sonic atmosphere of Emptyself's music. Johanson seamlessly blends technology with the soulful musicianship that he honed while playing blues and rock guitar for years in clubs and festivals throughout the Southeast.

Following his high school graduation, Eric spent about a year as a regular attraction on Memphis' famed Beale St., before returning to New Orleans to pursue larger philosophical questions that traditional blues playing could not satisfy. Over the next 4 years, he would work out his ideas both through academic means, earning a degree in Philosophy from the University of New Orleans, and through the music of Cire, his progressive art-rock trio. Cire released 2 CDs, Pleasure Is Our Enemy (2001), and Adrenological (2003), generating an international cult following that reached well beyond Cire's live exposure.

Wanting to branch out from the common rock format, Eric once again began experimenting with the open palette of sampling and synthesis to tastefully compliment the guitar/vocal-based songwriting, to reach an emotional intimacy beyond anything he'd done before. This new project, both defying normal genre classification and yet strangely accessible at the same time, would become Emptyself.