Put “Tropical Non Heat” on and it can send you down some side road out of Tron, somewhere between a fantasy detour and a small sci-fi malfunction. Probably not recommended on shrooms, though somebody will take that as a suggestion. The synth line stays calm and melodic, repeating until it becomes strangely insistent, almost aggressive in the amount of space it takes up.
We’re premiering the track right here on IDIOTEQ and you can immerse yourself in this experiment below! The official release follows on September 30 through Widsith Records, with Sanndröm’s Martin Sandström setting the Bandcamp date one day early specifically for this premiere. He wrote, recorded and mixed the track himself, as he did the whole upcoming album. Henrik Wikner mastered it at Studio Vinden.
“Tropical Non Heat” is the fourth single from “Annersia“, the third and final album in a trilogy that Martin only fully recognised once he reached this record. The album is due later this year, with the exact release date still to come.
The title of the single is considerably less serious. Martin grew up watching a TV series called “Tropical Heat“, which he later found listed on IMDb as “Sweating Bullets“. The other half of the joke comes from Jämtland, where even summer can get seriously cold.
Jämtland also gave all three records their names.
Martin grew up in Uppsala, just north of Stockholm, but spent a lot of his childhood and teenage years at his grandparents’ house in Jämtland.
Namn, which is also the Swedish word matching the English word “name”, is the village beginning next to that house.
Slandrom is another nearby village, chosen partly because of how close the name sounds to Sanndröm. Annersia is the local term for the area across the bay from Östersund, literally “the other side”.
Once he reached that third name, the earlier records started making sense to him as a set.
His grandparents have been gone for many years, though the house remains in the family.
“Annersia” became a small tribute to the area and to his grandparents. The name also works for the way he hears Sanndröm. “The other side” fits music that, in his words, seems to come from somewhere else.
The geography exists inside the recordings in a very literal way too. A small amount of the earlier music was tracked at the old house, and parts of “Annersia” were recorded there last summer. Martin worked through the bright northern summer night while everyone else in the house was asleep.
He is careful about taking that connection too far. The music itself is not built around one specific location in any strict sense. The album names carry the places, and the places remain close to him, but the songs still come from the same loose process he has used since the beginning of Sanndröm.
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That process starts with a small portable synth and a lot of guitar pedals. A riff, melody or bassline usually comes first. Martin then builds layers around it, some written and some improvised, with most of a track recorded during one sitting.
Mixing stays fairly light. He adds things such as reverb, compression and basic adjustments, leaving much of the original sound where it landed when he first played it.
The first instinct is the point.
“Everything should be played by my hands on the actual synth & very little has been cut up in the computer cause I like to keep some imperfections & also some sort of I guess human feel to it,” he said.
Older records are part of the reason. He likes hearing the little accidents that happened during performances, including details that musicians and producers working inside computers now often spend time removing.
“Many times that’s what makes the music breathe or feel real to my ears.”
Sanndröm has become the place where those small timing slips can stay. Martin does not use the same rule everywhere. With some of his other bands and projects, he can chase something close to perfection.
Nighttime is less of a Sanndröm ritual than it might initially seem. Martin tends to get ideas late regardless of the band or project he is working on. The first Sanndröm album pushed that habit further because much of it was made during the pandemic, when there was little happening in the city and plenty of quiet nights to work through.
He occasionally makes music at other hours. Sanndröm could exist at ten in the morning. It just usually arrives much later.
Time itself has become harder for Martin to separate from the project.
He remembers particular periods of his life intensely and thinks a lot about how quickly or slowly time seems to move at different stages. A strong memory has its downside too.
“I’m almost obsessed with the idea of time,” he said. “I can get stuck in nostalgia & the past sometimes & you know think about what could have been instead & things like that.”
That sits close to his uncertainty about whether “Annersia” should also finish Sanndröm. Three records now belong to a specific run of years, places and memories, and he likes the idea of leaving them together as one complete period. No final decision has been made.
He can still hear himself in whatever kind of music he is making, regardless of genre, and his curiosity usually points towards whatever comes next.
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The visual side has stayed unusually consistent. Kalle Mattsson has handled Sanndröm’s artwork throughout the project. For the “Annersia” singles and the upcoming album cover, Kalle sent Martin a selection of finished or nearly finished images without the Sanndröm name or titles added, leaving him to choose which ones became the covers.
Kalle also made visuals and videos for every track on the first album. He handled visuals at one early Sanndröm show too. Later performances happened without them, though the two have discussed bringing that part back for future gigs.
Live shows are still a small part of Sanndröm. So far the project has only appeared in Stockholm and Uppsala, and Martin would like to take it elsewhere.
Whether those shows continue beyond “Annersia” is still open. The same goes for another Sanndröm record.
“So I’ll see, it’s not like I have to care about anyone else in this project haha.”
