Words by

Jóhannes Bjarkason

Photo by

Sunna Ben

A deeper resonance

Expecting the birth of her first child, Indonesian-born Sandrayati Fay welcomed the release of her sophomore LP INHABIT on September 5.

Making an outsized impact with her debut EP Bahasa Hati in 2017, Indonesian-born artist Sandrayati settled down in Iceland during the lockdown years. There, she formed deep connections with the local music and art scene, finding a community among friends and peers.

Now, Sandrayati is expecting the birth of her firstborn. Eight months pregnant, Sandrayati has worked on her latest creation INHABIT for the past year. Like many artists, Sandrayati compares her creative work — which stretches numerous releases — to her children.

On INHABIT, Sandrayati explores the concept of the cycles, touching on ideas in relation to feminine biological processes like menstruation and pregnancies. However connected to her physical state at the moment, Sandrayati asserts that there was no link between the album and her pregnancy.

“When people find that out, they’re like, ‘Are you serious? You didn’t plan this?’ We’re like, No, we really didn’t,” she recounts. “Personally, I would have liked to not be pregnant while I’m working on an album. I didn’t realise how much work it is to create life,” Sandrayati smiles.

Inspired by the director of her 2023 music video “VAST”, Sandrayati conceived the idea of working with the concept of cycles. “[The director] was pregnant at the time and she was coming up with an idea that had to do with pregnancy, but it’s something I couldn’t relate to right at the moment,” she continues, ironically comparing the process to her current situation.

“So I was like, ‘Okay, how about we do it on the cycles?’ Because that’s something that I’m experiencing month to month,” Sandrayati stresses. Despite basing the album concept on feminine cycles, Sandrayati wanted to expand it to encompass the wider natural rhythms found everywhere.

“Later on, I realised that it isn’t necessarily about womanhood or women’s cycles. For me, it was about this being kind of a reflection on our feminine nature which exists in all bodies,” she clarifies.

Cyclical promotion

As opposed to the traditional method of publishing individual songs in the run-up of her album, Sandrayati went a different route, instead packaging groups of tracks into release bundles called cycles, each featuring three tracks representing different parts of the menstrual cycles and the natural elements.

In addition to this unorthodox practice, Sandrayati released audio recordings parallel to her promotional releases titled “Inhabiting Words” — mini podcast episodes, if you will. In them, the artist gives listeners a glimpse into individual songs.

“It’s like an audio journal,” Sandrayati explains. “I’ve always journalled for years, and through this process I was able to go back and reflect on the time that I’ve been writing the record. Why not share that with people?” she asks.

Sandrayati turns a mundane — usually dreadful —  component  of the music industry into an innovative method to engage listeners. It’s an approach that seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent, as artists try to find new avenues to express their creativity outside the traditional ‘single-album-tour’ methodology.

“In our times today, people don’t always listen to full records anymore when they’re out. I find it really sad. But in a way, when you break it up and you have this kind of waterfall movement that’s still part of one body, it gives a chance also for me to actually [express myself],” she argues for creating her release cycles.

“It gave me more creativity to play with it,” Sandrayati says hesitantly. “And then maybe, you know, five percent of people will listen to the whole thing,” she jokes.

Whip it

INHABIT is a strange world to enter. At the same time as it conforms to the accessible rubric of pop music, with Sandrayati’s stellar vocals and neat instrumentals, you can feel an undercurrent running throughout the album. In a meticulous way, Sandrayati gives in to the escalating flurry of emotions exhibited on it, using sharp vocal pitch breaks for emphasis.

As opposed to her previous works influenced by more singer-songwriter folk characteristics, Sandrayati ventures deeper into her musical register. When starting work on the album, she reached for her baritone guitar, which forms the anchor to numerous tracks.

“There’s a sound on this record that I’ve been really longing for a long time. I really fell in love with [the baritone guitar] and I’ve never played it on a record before or written much with it. It’s kind of been my guide to help me build that sound,” Sandrayati admits.

The use of this key instrument ties into Sandrayati’s driving feeling surrounding the album. “It sounds kind of cheesy, but there’s this energy I really wanted to live in in this record, especially performance wise. In that sense, I wanted to play with the embodiment of this kind of feminine energy that’s kind of dark,” she expands.

According to Sandrayati, that baritone guitar opens up a new sense of identity for her to explore — most notable on the track “Waken”. “Everyone’s always thinking, ‘Oh, you’re such a sweet singer songwriter with your guitar.’ This baritone physically brings in deeper tones and a deeper world, to kind of go underneath the current in terms of myself,” she ruminates.

Allowing herself to be guided by these integral emotions, INHABIT was produced in a very loose manner, relying on improvisation and execution by feel rather than form. “There’s not one song on this record that follows a metronome,” Sandrayati laughs. “In terms of that raw, feminine approach, it was so present in the whole creative process,” she smiles.

However necessary, this flexibility invited room for more rigidness. “Sometimes it was too much and someone had to bring the whip out. Someone had to be like, ‘OK, let’s put some structure to this,” Sandrayati jokes.

Unorthodox touring

Assisted by a breadth of different producers, Sandrayati enlisted the help of her own partner Ólafur Arnalds, who also worked on her previous album. “INHABIT started off really in my own world, so it was so fun for me to kind of branch off in that sense, and kind of bring things home,” she ruminates. In addition to Ólafur, UK-based producers SOHN and James Forde Stewart are credited on the majority of tracks, with additional production by the American Shahzad Ismaily and Iceland-based Francesco Fabris.

Unsurprisingly, given her pregnancy, Sandrayati won’t be going on tour in the near future. In the similar vein to the rest of her promotional strategy, Sandrayati is trying something different.

“Touring is just crazy these days. Like, how do you even manage it financially?” she asks. “It feels a bit crazy, but we are doing movement workshops called Inhabiting Bodies,” Sandrayati says.

Devised by Sandrayati herself — who’s also trained as a yoga teacher — Inhabiting Bodies is an international movement program featuring instrumental versions of the album. In early September, the workshop was hosted in Amsterdam and London, with more cities to follow.

“Anyone can reach out if they’re inspired to do it. It doesn’t have to do with me. It has to do with your own bodies and your own relationship to the cycles. We’re all connected to them somehow. It’s how we were born. I mean, look at this,” she points to her baby bump in disbelief.

“It’s been so crazy to be pregnant at this time because that was not the point [of the album].  But it really has helped me remember that it’s literally the cycle that we’ve all come from,” Sandrayati concludes.

INHABIT and “Inhabiting Words” are out on available streaming services. Follow Sandrayati on her Instagram @sandrayati for more updates on her unorthodox tour. If you want to put up your own Inhabiting Bodies workshop, get in touch with Sandrayati via social media.