This artist made a soundscape for the world’s largest sub-sea tunnel network. Here’s how he did itAs far as unique and surreal experiences go, journeying to the Faroe Islands to travel through the world’s largest sub-sea tunnel network of its kind, stopping off at its globally-renowned ‘Jellyfish Roundabout’, and later interviewing the producer who composed its singular soundscape is certainly up there.

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“I wanted to give the tunnel a voice,” explains Faroese-Danish producer and sound artist Jens Thomsen of the eerie immersive audio piece he was commissioned to create for the Eysturoyartunnilin’s dedicated radio station.
The soundscape — which runs for the average length of time it takes to drive across the 12-kilometre tunnel — is currently a live audio installation. Broadcast via FM radio, anyone travelling through the tunnel can tune in 24 hours, seven days a week.
Having opened in 2020, the Faroes’ answer to the Eurostar connects several otherwise-isolated islands locally and reduces travel time from an hour to 15 minutes. Inside the tunnel, there’s an ominous atmosphere, which is especially heightened when circling the Jellyfish Roundabout; alongside colour-changing shades of blue, red and green, black silhouettes of faceless figures stand tall around it as if they are guarding the central domineering structure.
Jens Thomsen at the Eysturoyartunnilin
When Thomsen was asked to create the audial soundtrack, he was immediately intrigued by the sonic possibilities. “It’s like painting with sound,” he says of the creative process. Having started out travelling into the tunnel in 2019, Thompson began sampling the sound of the construction taking place, as well as the frequent silence. Also key to his sonic collage were the meditative chants derived from samples of traditional Faroese chain dance.
“I wanted the piece to slow the listener down,” Thomson says, suggesting that, because it has to be experienced in motion, it’s a very literal case of travelling in time. This concept also presents an antithesis to the fast-paced nature of modern living, he adds: “Society going faster and faster, the way we consume art and social media,” which is generally at odds with life on the comparatively relaxed Faroe Islands.
Another contrast that Thomsen draws on is the fact that the track can be “explored in a totally different way to music that needs to go on the radio. All the other channels are news or radio to catch attention”, he adds, but with the composition “there’s nothing that’s trying to catch [one’s] attention.”
With all this in mind, Thomsen decided that he wanted to split the soundscape into three acts: driving from the tunnel entrance to the roundabout, going around the roundabout, and driving to the exit and out of the tunnel. He also had one question in mind: What does the tunnel sound like when it’s resting?
Jens Thomsen in his studio
Inspired by artists such as John Carpenter, Nam June Paik and Ingálvur av Reyni, as well as the Japanese Environmental music scene, when it came to creating his piece of “ecological sound art”, Thomsen used a Modular synth ES8 to interact with CV tools in Ableton.
Though traditionalist touches are subtly embedded into the multi-layered piece, the finished result is world’s away from what Faroese music has historically been known as. Sonically, the ominously chugging composition is an ambient mix of static frequency, whirring wind-like noise and eerie bleeps.
A bridging of old and new, both in sound and technique, the composition reflects a linking of two contrasting times. “In the Faroes, we have total silence but also adrenaline,” reflects MusicTech’s tour guide during our morning exploration of the capital city Torshavn.
Until a century ago, there were no instruments on the Faroes, which is an archipelago of 18 mountainous islands located halfway between Scotland and Iceland in the Northeast Atlantic. While the first was a violin, resourceful locals would often sing together based on rhythm and melody, with harmony being a much newer concept. They would also make noise from whatever items they could find; MusicTech learns that the inspiration for the Faroese national anthem stemmed from two beer bottles being clanged together.
Jens Thomsen at the Eysturoyartunnilin
Music remains integral to the island’s inhabitants (50,000 humans and 90,000 sheep) a century later. Many people who MusicTech meets during our weekend visit are musicians or involved in music in one way or another. As well as revered late-night hotspot bar Sirkus and independent record store Tutl, whose ethos is to release any and all music they are pitched, there are often several concerts on the same evening (spanning indie to contemporary classical) and even the semi-final of a local talent contest called Sement. After-parties in the Faroes typically see people gathering to unite in voice, too, often around a piano; for the vast majority of Faroese people, who are proud of their traditions, singing is integral to their culture.
This is true for Thomsen, too: “When I was a young child, I would sing over the sound of the milk compressor,” he remembers, also likening the constant sound of the sea as like a drone. As well as having grown up regularly hearing music, he explains that his grandfather was actually responsible for one of the oldest singing recordings on the Faroes.
As he got older, Thomsen started joining bands locally. “I was really fascinated with the whole recording studio process,” he recalls. Following a stint in London, where he lived from 2003, around the time that he became fascinated with the trip-hop sounds of Massive Attack and Tricky – “I wanted to recreate that”, he says – Thomsen immersed himself in the capital’s club culture, particularly parties like Hyperdub, and joined several different bands.
When he returned to the Faroe Islands to start the band ORKA in 2005, Thomsen began making his own instruments back at the farm he grew up on. “That was necessitated out of a longing for home,” he explains. Since moving back to his homeland in 2019, Thomsen has become a prolific name internationally as well as in local Faroese towns and villages, having mixed and produced a seemingly endless number of albums for other people. He has also released several albums from his own bands, including ORKA, and is regularly called upon for sound exhibitions at local galleries and theatres. This immersive side of music is something that has long fascinated him.
Jens Thomsen in his studio
Visiting his studio in the local area, which he built himself over several years, makes this abundantly clear. A sampler-loving self-confessed gear geek, among the vast range of tech he has amassed is a Minimoog, MPC60, MPC3000, Juno 60, Juno 106, Roland JD-800, MS20, ASR-10, and a modular rig. He also has some strong referencing options in the Barefoot speakers, Auratone speakers, NS10 speakers and a 5.1 Neumann setup. That’s before we get into the extravagant outboard gear.
Having so much at his disposal, it’s unsurprising that he describes the sub-sea tunnel project as a feat of “sonic archeology”. While it started off as a sequence part, reflecting the building of the tunnel and the progression, he triggered the pitch by using a sequencer and granular synthesis.
He then used a Minimoog, which added dark and unnerving elements to the piece, thus conjuring a dystopian atmosphere in the process. “I’m very interested in the reproduction of sounds,” he says, citing watching There Will Come Soft Rains as a five-year-old.
He adds that the plan was to remove the static of the piece, because it annoyed him initially. However, as “nobody could fix it”, despite the wider team enlisting the help of technicians around the world to try and do so, Thomsen now feels that it’s become “part of the piece, like the ghost in the machine. I find comfort in it being there now.”
Jens Thomsen at the Eysturoyartunnilin
After chronicling the technical process of creating the hypnotic and suspenseful piece in intricate detail, he goes on to share several specific influences that inspired it: Disintegration Loops by William Basinski and Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of my Life, of which he suggests “the noise is making cracks in late capitalism.”
While Thomsen says the roundabout has become an attraction due to it being so rare, he has been surprised to find the soundscape reaching a younger demographic. “Apparently children love it and are asking their parents to put it on,” he says.
What makes it even more special is that it’s only available on vinyl as a two-track EP. Conceptually, Thomsen suggests that ÆÐR (‘vein’ in English) explores modernity and post-war freedom through a Faroese lens. Moreover, he hopes that releasing the soundscape in a physical format will not only depict the parallels between the tunnel and Faroese society today, but also bring it to a wider audience around the world.
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