Sassy 009 celebrated the release of her debut album Dreamer+ at Next Door Records Two in Stoke Newington earlier this year, and Cold popped down to say hi.
Friends, fans and photographers drifted through the cosy, packed record shop/bar fusion. A vinyl display was laid out featuring the new record of the Oslo musician, who also goes by Sunniva Lindgård. The crowd stole glimpses of her between songs, excited to breathe in the new record together.
The sense of that momentum carries through winter as Lindgård continues the album’s life on the road – recently wrapping up a February tour with a newly announced follow-up show in London slated for May 14, 2026. It’s March now, and the record is still unravelling itself, opening up new layers and subtle moods you may have missed the first time you hit play, that become richer every time you give it another listen.
Dropping on January 16, 2026, via Heaven Sent/PIAS, Dreamer+ didn’t conform to any of the usual debut album expectations and is far removed from any of the weighty clichés that can sometimes come with it. There’s no kind of hurried rush to introduce herself (her lauded debut EP Do you mind releasing in 2017), nor is there any urgent desire to condense a body of work that’s accumulated over the span of almost a decade into a simple, straightforward statement.
The songs, though, feel instead like they move with the conviction of someone who’s spent enough time living along these tracks for them to be able to spiral into a universe all on their own from her Oslo bedroom and studio, proving to now exist and resonate far beyond those walls.
When working one’s way through the 12-track record (which clocks in at just over half an hour in length), it becomes obvious to anyone listening that the album is every bit as concerned with establishing its textures and a brooding, sinister atmosphere as it is with creating its grungy, trip-hop melodies and rhythms. One can almost feel the music merging and emerging, blurring in and out of one another, with Lindgård’s vocals, at times, seeming to drift away like a breath in one minute and come crashing back fiercely in the next. Lush beats are laid down on tracks like ‘Sleepwalker’s Pendulum’ carefully but with intention.
Even the collaborations on the record with Blood Orange, BEA1991, and Yunè Pinku sound far more than just your typical guest features exchanged over .MP3 or WAV files via email, they sound like hazy sensing intrusions from fictional characters orbiting Sassy 009’s world, like blended voices all passing through a common fog. The album in its entirety somehow works its way (quite impressively so) all the way down into an intimate sonic place somewhere between the club and the bedroom, if not also somewhere else in-between memory and imagination.
When it comes to anticipated debut releases such as this, there will always be artists who seem intent on making their first plunge into the collective consciousness feel heard as loudly as possible; others might find it more appealing to let the work simply speak for itself. It doesn’t feel quite as though Sassy 009 chooses to do either on Dreamer+, and the musician seems instead more interested in leaving space for who she might still become, opening the door and trusting that those who need this sound will find their way inside.
