Sea Change, is the project of Norwegian producer & singer Ellen A. W. Sunde, is back with a new album Mutual Dreaming available Feb 11th via German/Norwegian label Shapes Recordings. Recently the multi-artist shared the album’s lead-track “Night Eyes.” Speaking about the track, Sea Change said “‘Night Eyes’ is about the need to shut off your head and just be your body for a while – how good it can feel to lose control. I wanted to produce a danceable sensual track, and it’s one of my personal favourites from the album. A friend of mine told me that when she heard it it felt like she was floating in rave space – an image that I absolutely love.”

Sea Change’s previous album INSIDE was inspired by club culture in Los Angeles and Berlin – having spent some time exploring the hazy spaces of those clubs, she made her own version of that feeling in sound. In terms of time and place at least, Mutual Dreaming was born somewhere very different. Sunde relocated back to Norway, to the southern coastal town of Kristiansand, and had just started work on the new album when lockdown hit. So instead of the overstimulation of city life, the new album was made with a distinct absence of input from the outside world. Still, Sunde found she enjoyed it. “It was very quiet”, she says. “I could really concentrate on making new music. In a way, it was starting from scratch. The vibe was very explorative, and I had fun making it. It was easier to dive into it when there weren’t any distractions”. Sunde was keen to explore the physical side of music in the songs, the way it interacts with the body: “Music can be very primal. When you are going clubbing and dancing you can lose yourself in your own headspace, and be more in time with your body”.

With her new music, Sunde wanted to make something fresh and fast, even setting herself the challenge of making the album as quickly as possible, so she could follow her ideas without overthinking or over-processing them. The approach to writing and production (with co-producing help on some of the songs from frequent collaborator Andrew Murray Baardsen at Luft Studio) was driven by impulse and instinct rather than planning, something that gave her freedom: “It was liberating for me, to not think things through too much. To be able to just go where the song could take me. I felt more relaxed when making this one. This album is more deconstructed and very intuitive. With INSIDE, the process was more thought-through. This one was more anti-intellectual and also very visual. I often see images when I produce music, like different scenes in movies”. Even the lyrics followed this approach, written first as filler to suit the sound of the track, and then later reworked and remoulded to serve its mood. “It was very intuitive and stream-of-consciousness”, she says. “Visceral and very introspective”.

Sea Change
Mutual Dreaming
track list
Shapes Recordings

1. I Put My Hand Into A Fist
2. Is There Anybody
3. That’s Us
4. OK
5. Never Felt…
6. Night Eyes
7. Mirages
8. Mutual Dreaming
9. Rituals