TIDAL SHIFTS

Reimagine

TIDAL SHIFTS: REIMAGINE is the first music edition of MusicForTheSea’s ongoing series of releases and collaborations, inviting artists to give voice to the Ocean through art, science, and deep listening.

Created in celebration of United Nations World Oceans Day, this edition takes its name from this year’s theme: REIMAGINE: Beyond the world we know, A New Relationship with our Ocean.”

The release follows the spirit of TIDAL SHIFTS, a collective global effort first presented by MusicForTheSea as an official off-site event during the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, created in collaboration with ocean NGOs Peace Boat and PangeaSeed.

The EP features contributions by composers IDRA, OORA, Vito Gatto, Kazuya Nagaya, and Coco Francavilla, with underwater acoustic research by Neus Pérez Gimeno from the University of Cádiz, and artwork by visual artist Marco Ciceri.

TIDAL SHIFTS : REIMAGINE
by Various Artists

In celebration of United Nations World Oceans Day

For the first music edition of TIDAL SHIFTS, MusicForTheSea brings together IDRA, OORA, Vito Gatto, Kazuya Nagaya, and Coco Francavilla in a shared sonic reflection on the Ocean as a living, connecting force.

Inspired by this year's UN World Ocean Day theme, REIMAGINE, artists work with oceanic sound material of coastal field recordings, marine soundscapes, and underwater voices to transform scientific and natural sounds into intimate ambient listening experiences.

From Mediterranean depths to Japanese shores, from submerged resonance to fragile surface life, TIDAL SHIFTS: REIMAGINE explores the Ocean as a threshold between worlds, cultures, species, and states of awareness.

The release is accompanied by artwork from visual artist Marco Ciceri, whose fluid visual language extends the EP’s sonic world into image. His contribution offers a visual reflection of the same shifting matter at the heart of the music: water, movement, depth, and transformation.

Soundscapes featured in the compositions include recordings from underwater acoustic research conducted by INMAR, the Institute of Marine Research of the University of Cádiz, and MusicForTheSea’s main scientific partner. Led by researcher Neus Pérez Gimeno, the material features cetacean sounds from the Strait of Gibraltar and traces of anthropogenic noise that fosters a dialogue between scientific listening and artistic interpretation.

Together, the works form an invitation to reimagine our relationship with the waters that sustain us, and to recognize the Ocean not only as an ecosystem to protect, but as a living presence to which we have always been connected to.

Artists & Scientists

  • IDRA

    COMPOSER

    presenting
    BENEATH THE RESONANCE

    "Beneath the Resonance" emerges from the depths immediately unveiling hidden frequencies and resonances, It reveals the unseen in order to bring it into the light, an act of awareness toward what lies beneath, what exists within, in the abyssal depths. To preserve the deepest part of the world means also preserving the deepest part of ourselves, so it can surface into and toward the light.
    Reimagine becomes an act of seeing and listening from alternative perspectives, moving toward other directions and dimensions of perception.
    The track incorporates field recordings from the MusicForTheSea project, manipulated through granular processors and resonators to descend into the core of the recordings and reveal their hidden sonic layers - where often what remains unseen is the purest part of who we are

    IN CONNECTION WITH THE OCEAN

    For me, the sea represents my deepest roots, I spent most of my childhood by the coast, near the temples of Paestum, in a place where the scent of saltwater merged with the smell of earth, burnt wood, and the intense, resinous aroma of eucalyptus trees that marked the path leading to the beach.
    The sea holds my memories like a sacred archive.

    Even now, the slightest echo of its waves or the faint trace of its scent is enough to bring me back to the most intimate part of myself, making me feel once again surrounded by the presence and energy of those who held my hand and helped me take my very first steps across the warm sand.
    To me, the sea carries the gentle sound of beautiful memories.

  • OORA

    COMPOSER

    presenting
    TIDES AT BAY OF FUNDY

    When I visited the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, it was a dense, fog-laden day. Everything felt suspended, still on the surface, yet quietly charged underneath.
    Along this coastline, where some of the highest tides on Earth unfold, abandoned boat hulls lie scattered across the intertidal flats. At low tide they emerge exposed and skeletal in the mud; at high tide they disappear beneath the water, becoming submerged objects within a shifting acoustic and physical environment.
    This piece is a reimagining of that tidal experience in three stages: low tide, where the hulls rest in stark stillness, marked by rust, weight, and time; high tide, where the water rises and sound thickens as form dissolves into the ocean’s motion; and return, where the tide withdraws and the hulls reappear into air and silence, carrying the imprint of what the ocean temporarily held within itself.

    IN CONNECTION WITH THE OCEAN

    One of the defining qualities of a place, to me, is whether it exists beside the sea or not. For me, the sea has always been a place of beauty, discovery, and fear all at once.
    It holds some of my strongest experiences: my first kiss, my first endless night dancing until sunrise, the first time my father, a scuba diver, was almost swallowed by it.
    I have always been fascinated by what lies beneath the surface: immense unexplored depths inhabited by strange and alien forms of life, existing in darkness beyond our perception. In many ways, music inhabits that same space, an uncharted territory where emotion appears before language, where invisible currents pull memories, fears, and desires toward the surface. Like the ocean, it can feel vast, disorienting, intimate, and unknowable at the same time, something we enter without ever fully understanding what moves below us.

  • VITO GATTO

    COMPOSER

    presenting
    INTROIMMERSION

    It was 2017 when I first saw a whale, emerging from the surface of the sea, off the northern shores of Iceland. Only a few seconds, to plunge back in the depth of the abyss.
    The kindness and immensity of this cyclical and vital gesture moved me. I was petrified, in total silence.
    Discovering soon after their songs, I was mesmerized: I started listening to their recordings for hours, then integrating them into my creative process, as I was trying to establish an introspective and imaginary dialogue with these fragile, almost invisible giants of the sea.
    "Introimmersion" is the inner vision of a surreal but harmonious soundscape, where whale songs meet typical Alpine sound elements, recorded during several solitary excursions among the mountain ranges of Val Camonica.
    A sonic symbol of global environmental connection, an invite to see our planet as an entire living organism to take care of.
    To hear one day a whale song from a mountain top.

    IN CONNECTION WITH THE OCEAN

    The ocean, as much as the mountain, is for me what allows human beings to put themselves and their actions into perspective, to feel small, silently confronting the immensity of their pristine mystery. What allows us to feel like Nothing, and simultaneously part of a real Whole. The only way to truly become Human again.

  • KAZUYA NAGAYA

    COMPOSER

    presenting
    INDIGO REVERIE

    Japan is an archipelago surrounded by the sea, and other countries lie beyond that sea, unseen.  

    I recorded the Ocean soundscapes in front of the holy gate (Torii) located in Ibaraki prefecture up north from Tokyo. The holy gate is where the Gods enter from the sea and settle at the holy ground beside the sea. The holy ground is called "Isozaki jinja shrine.
    The sea is not just a natural resource but also the source of myths.

    IN CONNECTION WITH THE OCEAN

    As a child, I would gaze at the ocean and daydream about other lands. Those lands were my fantasies. They were paradises inhabited by dragons and dwarves. 

  • COCO FRANCAVILLA

    COMPOSER

    presenting
    INDIGO REVERIE

    Indigo Reverie began from the sound of Kazuya Nagaya’s Tibetan bowls, whose long resonances seemed to move like water, opening a space between ritual, breath, and the sea.
    The piece weaves Kazuya’s recordings from the Japanese ocean shore, captured near the sacred Torii gate of Isozaki Jinja, with transformed cetacean sounds from the Strait of Gibraltar. From the holy shore of Japan to the waters entering the Mediterranean, the composition imagines the Ocean as a continuous body, carrying voices, memories, and hidden forms of life across distance.
    Birdlike textures hover above the surface, while dolphin voices move below it, creating a dialogue between air and depth, sky and underwater world. A minimal piano melody moves through the piece like a fragile thread, held by sub frequencies and resonant processing. Indigo Reverie becomes a contemplation on the Ocean as a sacred threshold, a place where distant shores, species, and unseen worlds are inextricably and quietly connected.

    IN CONNECTION WITH THE OCEAN

    For me, the Ocean is memory, origin, and return.
    It carries the first sound before language, the pulse before thought, the water we come from and still carry within us. In its depths, I hear something ancient and familiar, a resonance close to the womb: a place of immersion, safety, and belonging. The Ocean is not only a place beyond the shore. It moves through our bodies, our breath, and the invisible currents between us.
    Through sound, I try to return to that space: to the hidden frequencies beneath the surface, to the living waters that hold our shared memory, and to the deep blue presence that reminds us we are never separate from the sea.To listen to the Ocean is to remember where we come from, and what connects us all.

  • MARCO CICERI

    VISUAL ARTIST

    presenting
    TIDAL SHIFTS / ARTWORK COVER

    The cover was shot underwater, where the waves crash and produce bubbles that lose their softness and take on the weight of stone. The water is portrayed as a geological matter to reflect the scale at which ocean ecosystems are truly shifting.

    What looks slow is fast when measured against deep time. Captured at an extremely fast shutter speed, the photograph freezes a fraction of a second that would otherwise remain invisible, turning a fleeting bubble into a seemingly solid form. The image wants to hold together opposing temporalities: the instant and the epoch, the fluid and the geological, highlighting the vast and often imperceptible transformations taking place beneath the ocean's surface.

    IN CONNECTION WITH THE OCEAN

    My relationship with the ocean is shaped by my experience as a mountaineer. In the mountains, I have learned to respect the forces that rule them, while the sea remains largely unknown to me. For this reason, it inspires in me a sense of the sublime and an even deeper sense of respect and awe.

  • NEUS PEREZ

    UNDERWATER ACOUSTIC RESEARCHER

    conducting
    MARINE SOUNDSCAPES RECORDINGS

    As an underwater acoustics researcher, my work consists of listening to the ocean and understanding marine ecosystems through their sounds. For this project, I contributed to the design of the acoustic deployments, fieldwork for data collection, and the analysis of underwater soundscapes recorded in Posidonia oceanica meadows and the Strait of Gibraltar, including cetacean sounds and anthropogenic noise.

    IN CONNECTION WITH THE OCEAN

    The ocean has always been a source of curiosity and wonder for me. Through listening, I have discovered that the sea is not a silent space, but a world full of voices, rhythms, and invisible relationships. Sharing these sounds with artists allows me to connect science with emotion and bring the hidden beauty of the ocean closer to other people.

Indigo Reverie

Music by Coco Francavilla & Kazuya Nagaya
Sound & editing by Coco Francavilla
Footage by Kogia.org
Whale eye image by Rachel Moore IG @moore_rachel
Additional visuals by Stanislao Cantono di Ceva
Underwater soundscapes by INMAR, University of Cádiz
MusicForTheSea.org