Sassy 009’s ‘Dreamer+’ opens with the dissonant sound of a motorcycle engine revving in the distance. Quickly, it builds in intensity, the phantom vehicle drawing closer and closer, as if arriving to transport us from our own gloomy reality to a distorted dreamland. This is the long-awaited debut album from Sunniva Lindgård’s alt-pop project, a record that treads the hazy line between our dreams and our physical existence, pondering who we become while we sleep. Are we more ourselves – freed from inhibitions and societal confines – or do we become somebody else entirely?
Lindgård is still asking herself that question when she speaks to NME from Los Angeles in late November. The Oslo native is visiting the city in search of fresh inspiration, something that she’s hungry for after coming to the end of the long, arduous road to her first full-length record, which arrives in January, almost a decade after she debuted as Sassy 009.
Sassy 009 on The Cover of NME. She wears a T-shirt by Palace, a jacket by Deadwood, trousers by A-Cold-Wall*, shoes by J.L-A.L and gloves by Palace. Credit: Furmaan Ahmed for NME
Since 2017, the project has been receiving acclaim for its experimental, enigmatic brand of techno pop. Initially, Sassy 009 made waves as a trio, completed by two former high school classmates, but within two years, those bandmates had departed the group, leaving Lindgård on her own. That shift in personnel, however, seemed more of a return to a natural state for her than a break-up. “Before we were a band, I had this project as my solo project for quite a few years,” she points out. Lindgård marked this change with the defiant statement of her 2019 EP ‘Kill Sassy 009’ – a collection of urgent, dancefloor-ready electronic tracks built upon euphoric beats and spacey synth. The hyperpop-imbued mixtape ‘Heart Ego’ soon followed, flexing her ability to write catchy, addictive hooks and the kind of pop lyrics you can’t help but mutter under your breath all day.
“On ‘Heart Ego’, I wanted to see if I was able to make these catchy songs. This time around, I was trying to do the opposite”
But Lindgård’s musical journey could have taken a very different route down the hallways of hallucinogenic pop than the one which it’s travelled so far. Both of her parents are classically trained musicians, and in her youth, she cycled through a plethora of instruments, but none ever seemed to fit her just right. “I think a part of me resisted, on one hand, my parents, but also their world and that very narrow frame that classical music is to begin with,” she reasons now. “You’re not supposed to stretch out your arms and be like, ‘Here’s me and my signature,’ you know? But I wanted to do that immediately, so I was so frustrated.”
Instead of classical symphonies, it was the discovery of early EDM – its colour and brashness – that she recalls inspiring her initially. “That’s a space that I think my parents would never understand,” she grins. Now, though, she admits that her feelings towards classical music have softened. ‘Ruins Of A Lost Memory’, the final track on ‘Dreamer+’, is an homage to her parents, sampling a melody they wrote for a Eurovision Song Contest entry in the ’90s. “Looking back on it, that exposure to so much classical music must have formed me and my musicality in a way I can’t really understand. Even when I was in my mum’s stomach, she was sitting in the orchestra and playing, up until she couldn’t anymore. I’m sure that must affect me in a way.”
Sassy 009 wears a jacket by Chöke, the stylist’s own trousers and shoes by Ashley Williams. Credit: Furmaan Ahmed for NME
‘Dreamer+’ has been a product of Lindgård’s internal dialogue for a long time – four years, in which she steered the project as both artist and producer – and perhaps that’s why it feels so intriguingly insular. Its concept also heightens the sense of claustrophobia, with Lindgård viewing the record as a score to a fictional tale of a protagonist who loses her soulmate in a dream state. Across 12 guttural, glitchy tracks, the depths of her love and the intensity of her mourning are exorcised in a storyline that Lindgård says eerily began to reflect her reality.
“I felt like I could understand my life in a different way when I saw it from that perspective,” she says. “Eventually it somehow became a working method that made it much easier to write, because I was stepping out of myself, seeing myself as a character and a creator of thoughts and feelings, rather than just trying to understand my own.”
Sassy 009 wears a T-shirt by Vintage Helmut Lang, a coat by A-Cold-Wall*, a skirt by Gil Hursthausen and shoes by Marsell. Credit: Furmaan Ahmed for NME
Aesthetically, she took inspiration from the horror video game Silent Hill, channelling its minimalist colour palette and subdued spookiness to conjure an intangible sense of gloom – the same one that hums in the background of our darkest dreams. Meanwhile, sonically, she leaned into ’90s trip-hop and purposefully strayed from the poppier tendencies of her earlier music, favouring slower BPMs, looser, more ill-defined structures and grungy guitars to frame the record’s uncanny themes. “I’ve been exploring my voice again by making this record, which I guess is a result of not trying to make pop songs,” she says of the latter. “On ‘Heart Ego’, I really wanted to see if I was able to make these catchy songs. But this time around, I was trying to do the opposite.”
Thinking outside of those more easily palatable sonic references was also, in some ways, part of a wider desire to return to the purity of the way she made music as a teenager. “I didn’t really sing until I started making beats. That was the first time I heard my own voice, so I was kind of scared of it,” she says. “But I was so free at the time. I didn’t have any expectations on who was going to listen to it. It was just ‘la la la’ and then upload, the process was not complicated. I could use a bit of that mindset now, for sure.”
“You have to try to break through the noise”
That craving to return to creative purity speaks to the dystopian feeling that ‘Dreamer+’ also captures – operating, perhaps unintentionally, as an apt soundtrack to the feeling of detachment from one’s own life that is increasingly common in our ever-digitised age. In tracing the warped reality of our dreams, Lindgård also taps into the zeitgeist of a terminally online generation doomed to crave a sense of freedom they’ll never quite reach. In fickle attempts to capture this elusive feeling, pop culture has entered a now well-documented nostalgia loop, grasping at the aesthetics of long-ago eras in a last-ditch effort to feel something again. It’s akin to the feeling of trying unsuccessfully to snap out of a nightmare or a bout of sleep paralysis.
In the music industry, this is a particularly relevant conundrum – especially for artists like Lindgård whose careers grew from a version of the internet unrecognisable from the inescapable hellscape it has become. “You have to try to break through the noise,” she says of the reality of releasing music today. “It’s impossible to be free from that pressure if your ambition is to make a living from music, which is such a cursed blessing to be able to do. I’ve been lucky not to have thought too much about that while I’m creating, but it is definitely distorting the relationship I have with my craft. I think many artists can relate to that.”
Sassy 009 wears a dress and shoes by Ashley Williams. Credit: Furmaan Ahmed for NME
It’s a feeling she’s been trying to define with other artist friends, landing on one succinct analogy: “Working with music feels like being in love with someone, but never being loved back,” she explains. “It’s a very bizarre, but not necessarily toxic, thing. The dynamic is so strange because sometimes you might feel validated by your own music, but once the moment is gone, there are all these other emotions. I haven’t really found a solution to that, yet, but I would love to figure out a way to be more free again.”
Collaborating, she says, has been helpful in beginning to regain that joy, “because I’m reminded of what I actually can do when someone else is in the room,” she explains. When she set out to make ‘Dreamer+’, Lindgård was intent on regaining full creative control. As the record unfolded, she became keener to break out of the solitude that comes with that. “I know now that I can do it by myself, but I also know that I don’t have to,” she says. “I’ve had that experience, and I can claim my capabilities, but it’s also been a lesson in seeing the beauty of collaborating as well.”
‘Dreamer+’ boasts features from Blood Orange, BEA1991 and Yunè Pinku – flourishes on the album that represent some of the many changes in form throughout its four-year creation process. “Originally, I didn’t want to have features, almost as a principle of ‘this is my debut album, and it’s me and not anyone else’,” she tells us. “But then I was becoming more and more frustrated with not being finished, and it felt like those tracks needed something that I, myself, couldn’t imagine. They needed someone else’s voice.”
Sassy 009 wears a jacket by J.L-A.L, a dress by Katya Zelentsova, trousers by A-Cold-Wall* and the stylist’s own shoes. Credit: Furmaan Ahmed for NME
Now in Los Angeles, she’s imagining her next project as more of a communal effort: “I can make my own songs fully – from nothing to a finished thing by myself – but I’m not necessarily as interested in doing that this time.” Instead, she’s scouring the city, “figuring out who I intuitively feel like working with creatively” and daring to surrender the reins of Sassy 009 to outside input once again.
Her first record, then, symbolises both an act of creative defiance and the constantly evolving nature of a project that began as a SoundCloud profile almost a decade ago. As the record draws to a close, Lindgård’s voice fades in, offering an epilogue that outlines our protagonists’ heartwrenching fate. There’s a burst of sound and, at once, the dream is over – eclipsed by bird song signalling a return to reality. Lindgård’s ambition is that when it’s finally heard, the record will be experienced in a manner similar to the dreams that exist as its muse – a universe we exist inside entirely, though just for a fleeting time.
“I hope that it resonates in a way that feels meaningful,” she says. “There’s so much music to listen to, and there are so many things we’re exposed to all the time. If my album has the potential to actually, even if it’s just for a moment, mean something to someone, that’s all I could hope for it to do.”
Sassy 009’s ‘Dreamer+’ is released on January 16 via Heaven-Sent/PIAS.
Listen to Sassy 009’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Laura Molloy
Photography: Furmaan Ahmed
Styling: Lottie Collins
Label: Heaven-Sent/PIAS
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