Sassy 009 is forever in flux

Sometimes it carries an industrial edge, as on debut EP Do you mind (2017), or it makes you levitate, as on mixtapes KILL SASSY 009 (2019) and Heart Ego (2021). Whatever the palette, her futuristic and lustrous music is transportive, and Dreamer+, Lindgård's debut album proper out this week, is no exception. In her pursuit of change, she’s landed on her most ambitious and fully realised project yet, sewn together from a lifetime of musical experiences and the metamorphosis that comes with harnessing creative artistry.

For Lindgård, her earliest exposure to music was far from the wide-ranging digital pop we hear from Sassy 009 today. She was born to classically trained musicians, but the discipline never resonated and she couldn’t pinpoint why. “When I was trained as a child, I was just by nature neglecting that [music],” Lindgård tells me. “Classical music to me was what my parents did and what I didn’t want to do, while listening to music was a completely different experience.”

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Although she initially didn’t realise she wanted to make music, once she entered her teens, the desire grew due to the internet’s endless possibilities. Rites of passage including self-discovering music, scouring torrents like The Pirate Bay, and growing up with streaming services helped Lindgård stumble upon the vibrancy of electronic dance music. Only then did the cogs of inspiration begin turning. “There was a part of me who didn’t really even consider, let’s say pop music, as something different from classical music,” she says. “It was just like a whole other world for me.”

Contrary to the dominant narrative, Sassy 009 didn’t begin as a trio. Before she released anything, it was Lindgård’s online display name on Soundcloud and her nickname at school. The three-piece line-up with classmates Teodora Georgijević and Johanna Scheie Orellana formed to play that material live, which was when the project really kicked off, but both left before the release of KILL SASSY 009. Lindgård explains that the shift back to working on her own was natural: “When it came to identifying with [Sassy 009] as a solo artist, I didn’t have any issues with that part because it had been a part of me for a long time as just me.”

When you’re comfortable working in a certain way, it can be difficult to divert from it. If you have no issues with your working methods, why bother shifting gears? Over the years in interviews, Lindgård has repeatedly asserted her contentment in writing and producing nearly everything herself, with her DIY attitude shaping Sassy 009’s idiosyncrasies.

Dreamer+, concocted over four years, was largely steered by this impetus. “For some reason, I was just so dedicated to the idea of making an album now,” she says. “I wanted to do it myself because there’s a part of me who needed to know whether I can or not.” By design, the record embodies a profound insularity. Based on a narrative she wrote, its dozen moody tracks follow a protagonist who loses her soulmate in a dream state and navigates this loss. “The story started to make sense through conversations I was having with people about it,” Lindgård shares. “That’s something I’ve never really done before, which I think I was so excited about. I was instantly inspired by it.”

She began consciously imprinting her life experiences onto her tale, suddenly “finding [herself] in the middle of the story,” which acted as a loose guide on how to channel her intensely personal feelings if she ever lost her sense of direction. However, cracks in her steadfast solitary ways began to form: “For a long time, I wanted [Dreamer+] to just be me, but then, the deeper I was in the process of finalising the project, the more lost I felt in terms of measuring when it was actually finished.”

Further change was imminent, unsuspectingly out of necessity. Lindgård let go of creating Dreamer+ alone by enlisting the help of collaborators she admires, such as Blood Orange, BEA1991, and Yunè Pinku, who each added their unique touches to its enthralling atmosphere. The experience proved to be so rewarding: “To send something off and you get something in return… It’s like, ‘It’s amazing! Why didn’t I do this before?’”

Her avoidance of being pigeonholed through genre-hopping is best heard on a song like “Edges”, an interrogation on whether she’s losing her edge. Grungy with a ‘90s alt-dance flavour, its processed vocal distortions and softly swelling breakbeats see the extremes of KILL SASSY 009 and Heart Ego almost seamlessly combining. There are a lot of potential inspirations you could parse from "Edges" alone, but Lindgård would rather not give too much away.

“That song really represents how confused I’ve been over mixing all these things because I haven’t really been able to tie it to something else that I know of musically,” she offers. “I obviously have references and inspirations I can isolate. I love Gorillaz – massive inspiration – I also love the sound of Lil Wayne’s vocal performance, and Nirvana, of course. But mixing all these things for me has been my great pain because I was never sure if it made sense.”

“What is most important is to maintain the feeling you want to express through whatever it is,” she affirms, and that sensibility is felt throughout Dreamer+, which carries a hallucinogenic atmosphere not only because of its dream-centric story but also the minimal, deconstructed, and airy grooves that Lindgård has adopted. “RIP Time and Thought” and the titular track “Dreamer” are a one-two punch of muffled, naturalistic ambience into percussive, after-dark downtempo. “There will be a new interpretation [from my inspirations],” Lindgård says. “My interpretation of that will be something new, but then, on top of that, I have this vision of what the song is about. So, I’m trying to make those things meet.”

It became clear that the sparser production is the crucial ingredient compelling Lindgård to label this album as the one she’s always wanted to make. “Just taking things a bit down,” she clarifies. “I personally relate more to that, in a way.” She notes how her previous records were exercises “to prove, at least to [herself], how fucking epic [she] can go,” but these days she's more drawn to “putting sound to something that [she’s] been deeply and emotionally invested in.”

Lindgård grew up snowboarding, even in the streets of Oslo, and much like skateboarding edits, the music choice in snowboarding videos contributes to how those skilful spectacles are emotionally perceived. “Filming snowboard edits has been so important for what my sound has been, like the speed, the pace, and the constant search for adrenaline,” she explains. “But then, there’s another part of me who never was drawn to adrenaline; there’s more of an introspective person. I’ve been embracing that side of me more this time.”

Closing track "Ruins of a Lost Memory" arrives as a surprising, full circle moment in which Lindgård embraces her classical roots for the first time on record, incorporating a gorgeous piano melody that ultimately dissipates into distortion. “That's a song my mom and dad wrote in the ‘90s," she explains. "They sent it off to the Eurovision Song Contest in hopes that it would make it, but it didn’t.”

For Lindgård, the chance to miraculously give her parents’ tender song a new lease of life is meaningful on every level. “My mom told me she was sad after they had recorded this song because there was a part of her who knew that no one would ever hear it,” she explains. “She felt like that song was really important to her. Now, it’s like 30 years after, and it is coming out. I’m so principally drawn to that concept of making that dream come true. Of course, it’s my mom, I’m the daughter, and my dad’s playing the piano, but there’s no way for me to not put this one out. I almost have to.”

While the writing process behind Dreamer+ was occasionally thorny, the result is stellar. It’s the most explorative Sassy 009 release to date, and also points to continued evolution moving forward. “I’ve been very much more cautious about putting things together as a whole in a different way,” Lindgård says. “I’m stepping into a different palette of my sound, and I’m still not sure what the next one will be. This record is a really important documentation, at least for me, that I did it, and that’s what it sounded like.”

Whatever form Sassy 009 takes on next, it’ll certainly be different again. Lindgård is an artist who refuses to stay in stasis, just as dreams do. For her next release, she may no longer be alone. “I’ve been steering this project in solitude,” she says with a relieving laugh, “So it’s kind of like… I don’t even know if I’m ever going to do that again.”