Following 2015's Breakage, Norwegian artist Sea Change (aka Ellen Sunde) presents Inside. Inside is a collection of seven tracks which focus on the transformative and physical effect of music. An upbeat answer to SØS Gunver Ryberg's Entangled, Inside is a luminous and ecstatic listen. It permits the body to medicate the mind.
Sunde has described her recording process as 'almost anti-intellectual'. This is embodied in her album's sensuality; it's in the lyrics, which reference skin, bones, muscle and fur. It's in the thudding sub-bass which grounds Sunde's breathy delivery. Inside is so thick with physicality you can almost snatch it from the air.
Songwriting is robust and unpredictable. Second track 'Stepping Out' makes an abrupt and joyful upshift for its final third. It's a case of medium as message, as the song's lyrics describe a werewolf-like transformation. The wolf embodies, as it always has, a psychosexual hunger — in this case, the hunger for movement and self-expression. The song's form follows, stirs this same urge; an urge for dance, freedom and physical connection.
Later in the release, 'Scratch That Itch' repeats the trick, even making a similar lyrical reference to 'shape-shifting'. But it's a beast wholly of its own, relentless and bolstered by swampy booms of sub-bass. Thanks to the strength of co-producer Andrew Murray's mixing, you might mistake them for your own heartbeat.
And even the slow jams on Inside are irresistible. 'What Makes' summons the spirit of 80s electropop ballads, the dearly departed Mark Hollis of Talk Talk, but doesn't catch Stranger Things syndrome and slip into parody. It's a lush, beautiful song; a composition which seems to skip stonelike across a half-frozen lake.
Penultimate track 'The Bed' builds to a Nils Frahm-esque crescendo. But it is delivered with more colour and canniness than any of Frahm's work. It has a wonderful analogue feeling. Ramping synths muster the sublimity of Alice Coltrane's devotional work. A panning, train-like chitter is like something from an early acousmatic noodler's playbook.
'The Bed' seamlessly transitions into 'Flown', one final affirmation of the physical self. Its structure and content may, by this point, seem familiar to listeners. It's true: many songs on Inside cover superficially similar ground. But rather than nullify each other, they cumulate and strengthen a collective thesis. Inside comprehensively explores our multi-faceted interior worlds, from different angles and under different lights. And all the while, it tempts all that potential energy we hoard within to explode to the surface. With this engaging release, Sunde tends to a force which animates us and turns us from bags of skin to something greater.
Inside, released on Nov. 15th, will be available here.
Words by Andrew O’Keefe