Name: Sarah Nienaber aka Blue Tomorrows
Nationality: American
Occupation: Composer, singer, songwriter, producer, sound artist
Current release: Blue Tomorrows's new album Weather Forever is out now.  

If you enjoyed this Blue Tomorrows interview and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her on Instagram, Soundcloud, and bandcamp.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

If I’m listening to music analytically, I have to close my eyes to fully hear it, though that’s not the way I listen just for the sake of listening. Music triggers my mind more so than my body.

If I’m able to completely immerse myself in a listening experience, especially at a loud concert, my mind’s eye will travel through interwoven memories and abstract visions of unknown origin. It can feel very much like dreaming.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

One of my favorite things about listening to music through headphones is how reverb sounds more pronounced–lusher, longer. Everything sounds, I imagine, closer to how it was intended to sound, because it’s not bouncing around and getting mixed up with the reflections of whatever room you happen to be in.

That said, I do love ambience, and how the color of one room or speaker setup can completely transform a song you’ve heard a thousand times.

I gravitate toward “dense” music in general, and different listening setups sometimes reveal new instruments, textures, and melodies that I never previously noticed. Sometimes, if I’m listening to music in a very lively space, I’ll hear “ghost melodies”–lines that aren’t really there, but my brain infers them in the reverberation and noise of the room.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

All Things Being Equal by Sonic Boom - Complex textures paired with simple melodies. “The Way That You Live” is a great example of what I love about this album.



Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Guitar! This album sounds so immediate and raw, but the way the guitars are layered up throughout is also very intricate and almost fragile-sounding to me.

Most beautiful rock guitar I’ve ever heard. “Powderfinger,” is probably my number one pick from this one.



For the Sake of the Song by Townes Van Zandt - There are versions of many of these songs on later Townes albums, and those are probably the versions people think of first, but these are so compelling and strange.



The arrangements are more dense, the tape is over-saturated, and there’s a ton of reverb on his voice. Is it a plate, or some sort of chamber reverb? I’d love to know.

It doesn’t sound like a country album from 1968.

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

I really struggle with loud, chaotic or unpredictable sounds, so much so that my body can have a very physical and unpleasant response.

I used to work in a guitar store and sometimes on busy days there would be so many people playing different songs at once on guitar and bass with the amps turned up loud. One time it was so bad I started having visual hallucinations and had to just go home.

I can recall another time that we were loading into a show in Dallas, and every other club on the block was blasting dance music with the doors and windows open. It was so dissonant and loud I had a full-on panic attack.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

The sound of heavy traffic freaks me out.

I could listen to any natural sound indefinitely, like rain, wind, thunder, or moving water.

Within the realm of music, I think pedal steel, lap steel, or any sort of slide guitar is probably my favorite sound. I did some heavy lap steel layering in forward and reverse on “Halo.” Someday I’ll learn how to play that instrument.



Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

Any place with intense reverb: a parking garage, an empty house, a concrete tunnel.

I don’t know if it qualifies as an “everyday place,” but I think the most incredible “natural” reverb I ever heard was in a mausoleum.

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

I guess this would be sort of the opposite of an anechoic chamber, but one of the most unique-sounding places I’ve ever been was the redwood forest in Northern California.

It’s subtle, but the way that sound bounces around off all of the trees is magical. Imagine someone randomly twisting the pre-delay knob on a scattered, chaotic reverb with a short decay.

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

Any space where I can explore freely without feeling self-conscious about anything, whether it be ideas, mistakes, or time. That tends to be at home.

When I was recording Weather Forever, we lived in a small place and the main recording setup was in the living room. It was hard for me to feel alone enough there. We also had a practice space set up in the garage. It was an 8x10 box, completely sound-proof and air-tight. We did three-piece rock band practice in there and the neighbors had no idea we played music.

I went in there to write and record when I needed to. It was a truly isolating place, no outside light, no outside sound or stimuli of any kind. I wrote “Colorado,” “Knowing Everything,” and “Nothing Free” entirely in that box.



Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

There’s a book on lighting photography called Light: Science & Magic, and in it there’s a passage about how while some art is created by manipulating physical matter, like paint or clay, photography and music  are both made by manipulating energy: light or sound.

I’m permanently fixated on this idea, and when I’m working with sound I am very much thinking about it as energy moving, with some degree of its own free will, through time and space.

All that to say, sound actually feels incredibly immaterial to me, though it does need material to exist! This is almost too much to think about.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

The sound of coyotes singing has always moved me profoundly. When we lived in rural Oregon, their voices would bounce around the hills in an endless echo.

We recorded that sound for my other project, Shady Cove, and used it to introduce the song “Winter Garden.”



Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I unfortunately have never been good at taking precautions, and very luckily I’m not suffering from these issues.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

We all love to curate our sensory experiences one way or another, but I think there is a lot to discover in the unexpected sounds just existing around us in any moment, natural or otherwise.

In them there’s subliminal inspiration, maybe.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

Hearing and vision both are so incredibly subjective. Perspective is paramount in what shapes our individual realities, much more so than any particular sense.

I think our world would benefit most greatly if we made an effort to imagine what it is like to experience the world from the perspectives of others.