Visual
Øystein Sevåg and Lakki Patey
Visual is an ambient, meditative record, inspired by nature and the power of silence. Lakki Patey and Øystein Sevåg’s graceful guitar-keyboard duets leaves space for listeners to form their own images. The album was named “Best Ambient Album of the Year” in 1996 by Wind and Wire Magazine in the USA. This is Sevåg/Patey’s second collaboration, recorded ten years after their first project, Windflowers. It was done after Sevåg’s two first solo album Close Your Eyes and See, and Link.
Performers:
Øystein Sevåg – keyboards
Lakki Patey – acoustic guitar
All music composed by Lakki Patey and Øystein Sevåg
Recorded at Bogen Lydstudio, Stokke, Norway 1992 – 1993.
Recording and mixing engineer: Øystein Sevåg
Produced by Øystein Sevåg and Lakki Patey.
Visual was released in Norway by Siddhartha Spiritual Records in February 1994. It came out two years later in the USA and the rest of the world because Windham Hill wanted to release Global House first. The label sought to build on Sevåg’s success with his previous album, Link, and stylistically, Global House was a more natural follow-up to Link than Visual, as Visual is a much more tranquil and meditative album. However, the creative flow of artists doesn’t always align with the logic of effective marketing strategies. Øystein was eager to delve deeper into the qualities he and Lakki had discovered while working on Link, and wanted to complete and release their Visual album before Global House in Norway. They completed Visual in late autumn of 1993 and it was released in February 1994.
Grid of composer and arranger credits, durations and recording techniques.
Øystein and Lakki in 1995 (photo: Christine Schønberg)
The original Norwegian Visual cover. By Jon Tøien, based on an idea by Øystein.
Øystein’s sketch for the original cover