Sunnsetter

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This past week I was able to connect with a talented shoegaze solo artist, called Sunnsetter, who is releasing their latest music video for “Take A Shot.” I also asked Sunnsetter about their approach to writing music as well as how they put together the pieces of their new LP, called Heaven Hang Over Me.

Heaven Hang Over Me blends various genres and explores deep themes like anxiety and self-reflection. Can you walk us through your creative process when blending these different styles?

A lot of it is born from me just wanting to experiment with different genres, and getting bored with writing things that just sound the same again and again. I like being able to incorporate styles and aesthetics and find a way for them to mesh that doesn’t sound too jarring. So that I don’t have to limit myself to just one thing.

Can you talk more about how you’ve developed your sound over the years?

I started early on, back in like 2008, doing mostly experimental and ambient stuff that was based in singer songwriter format. Over the years I started to foray more into different aesthetics like post rock and psychedelic inspired sounds. A lot of it was just me experimenting with textures I really liked and finding ways to make a song out of that. Eventually I started to do film scores when I was in college and i learned a lot more about textures and moods and how to convey emotion in my music. It wasn’t until like 2019 that I even got into doing shoegaze, before that I was mostly focused on slowcore/emo/general ambient crunchiness. For me this newest record is the closest I’ve come to blending that older emo sort of style with my newer appreciation for shoegaze and poppier song structures.

How have your personal experiences influenced your evolution as an artist, and how does that come across in this new album?

I’ve gone through a lot of shifts. As one would I guess over the course of 15 years or so that I’ve been putting out music. Around 2017 there was a period where I really started to take music more seriously and I was focused on writing stuff that was very raw and personal. I made a couple of albums in that vein and it began to really wear on me emotionally so I sort of shifted my focus back to making stuff that was a bit more aesthetic based, but still writing songs that felt genuine. I think that all of the time I have spent recording and producing my own music has created a comfort zone for me when I can now still get very personal lyrically speaking, but it doesn’t have to feel so gutting to get there on an emotional level as it once did. I think it’s pretty clear through the themes I write about and the lyrics, that a lot of my expression comes from dealing with mental illness and how that impacts my life and the people around me.

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