JANE DEASY
PROFILE
Jane Deasy is an Irish composer and artist exploring sound and cybernetics through music, performance, and writing. She is a Leverhulme doctoral researcher at the University of Huddersfield as part of the Amplification Project.
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 her 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
AWARDSBest Production Design at Dublin Fringe Festival for Opening Night, 2022
Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Awards in Opera and Music from 2020 - 2025
Arts Council of Ireland Music Project Awards, 2022 - 2026
Arts Council of Ireland Next Generation Award, 2017
PRESS
“The drones of Irish composer Jane Deasy can be blindingly pure, such as the light-beam of music she released in 2020 as Notes from the Bath.” - Marc Masters, Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp
“Drones as soothing as the sea itself. Blissful stuff.” - Byron Coley, The Wire
“at times so simple and static it seems to disappear.” - Marc Masters, Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp
BOOKINGS/INQUIRIES/CONTACT
Blog / Research / Text
Upcoming:Sonic Dramaturgy of Sewing Machines as Musical Instruments - conference paper presentation at KISMIF, July 2026.
Book chapter in Cyborg Voices: Identity, Artistry and Performance in the Age of AI ed. Chloe Kirson-Jones (due for publication January 2027, Routledge).
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Last Updated 24.10.31 Music / Sound / Performance
Upcoming:THE WARM UP AT CORK MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL TICKETS
SR001
BUY
Sympathetic Resonance, 2024
Cassette tape, essay, score book
Pink Noise/Ool is a sonic letter to deep listeners. Made with recordings of a waterfall, these pieces explore sound from the inside out.
Sympathetic Resonance 001 is a collaborative project between Jane Deasy and Ian Maleney. Recognising the truly interdisciplinary nature of listening, SR seeks to bring together practices and artists whose work resonates across disciplines towards a sonic way of knowing and being in the world.
OPENING NIGHT
OPENING NIGHT, 2022
Dublin Fringe Festival, The Complex Gallery, 2022
*Award winner Best Production Design
Cork Midsummer Festival, 2025
MOUTH OF THE SOUND
BUY
MOUTH OF THE SOUND, 2022
Label: Fort Evil Fruit
Mouth of the Sound is the continuation of a compositional process working with responsive sine tones, recordings, and feedback.
The field recording used and manipulated on the title track was made at the Slate Quarry on Valentia Island (in Irish, Beal Inse, which translates as Mouth of the Sound). The quarry is heard before it is seen, a large and resonant mouth in the earth. The piece immediately submerges the listener in saltwater turbulence and quivering electronics.
THAWING~
BUY
THAWING~ EP, 2021
Self-released, self-thawing
hand-dubbed cassette
Recorded at her studio in Dublin, Jane Deasy's EP Thawing, comprises two tracks that document her unique compositional process.
With both digital and analogue synthesis, she generates microtonal tuning systems to create intricate textures and harmonies. These minimal, harmonic structures often result from ‘sonic excavations’, revealing inaudible layers of recorded material and acoustic space.
“When I was 17 I could do anything. My emotions wwere so close to the surface. I’m finding it harder and harder to stay in touch.”
- Myrtle Gordan in John Cassavettes 1977 film Opening Night
NOTES FROM THE BATH
BUY
NOTES FROM THE BATH, 2020
Label: Fort Evil Fruit
Notes from the Bath is a melancholic meditation on personal spaces that applies an algorithmic process to minimal material, building intricate textures and exposing hitherto inaudible layers. Beginning with an almost static drone, the hour-long piece unfolds into an increasingly intense and immersive listening experience.