This Musician Has Defined a New Colorado Sound

"I spend a lot of time in the mountains," says Sarah Christiansen, the multi-instrumentalist and mastermind behind the ambient project Sun Swept. "My favorite thing to do here in Colorado is to go backpacking for a few days, which allows me to slow down and notice my surroundings. There are so many varied zones you get to see as you move through the trails: big open expanses, basins where you are surrounded by peaks on all sides, thick pine forests that extend for miles. he variety is really interesting. I hope to evoke those sort of peaceful moments I experience in nature in my music."

She's succeeded. The Denver musician's new full-length album, Germinations — being released on cassette and celebrated with a performance at Glob in RiNo on Saturday, January 25 — is a love letter to Colorado's majestic, meditative outdoors. The wordless, seven-song cycle is breathtaking in atmosphere and scope; using the flute and its cousin, the recorder, Christiansen loops and layers drifting melodic lines alongside gentle, minimal synthesizers. The result is simultaneously lulling and overwhelming. And yes, Colorado-esque.

"I don't necessarily set out to write a piece with a particular environment in mind," says Christiansen, who grew up in St. Louis before relocating to Colorado. "I usually build up a composition based on sounds that I find interesting and then consider what it reminds me of when committing to a title. I think that informs the performances moving forward as I try to conjure that landscape."

She cites Germinations's hypnotic opening track, "Mirror Lake," as a great example of her process: "It has a slow and glassy quality that reminds me of sitting by an alpine lake on a summer morning, observing the reflection of a mountain on the water." The album's closer, "Altostratus," is more foreboding but no less beautiful. As Christiansen says, "To me, the song evokes the beauty of the sky turning gray while clouds float by, signaling an impending storm."
The term "New Age" popped up in the '70s to classify the general kind of music Christiansen creates today. Over the years, New Age became a joke to many music fans, a way of labeling and dismissing fluffy instrumentals that were decidedly woo-woo in vibe — and at their worst, co-opted Indigenous traditions. But New Age has made a comeback in the past two decades, and it's something that Christiansen is happy to embrace.

"I have started using the New Age label to describe my music after being a bit unsure of it initially," she says. "Some of my reservations were cultural appropriation by early New Age musicians, the corny reputation the genre has and New Age belief systems that I do not subscribe to at all. I find the corniness can be endearing, though, if I'm being honest. I appreciate the earnestness, and I love that people are embracing the genre and taking the parts of it that work for them."

She continues, "I also love that the New Age genre has historically had such an emphasis on cassette culture, with artists self-publishing or distributing through DIY record labels. One of my earliest musical loves was Riot Grrrl, which also had a huge emphasis on DIY and self-publishing. I had a zine myself in high school, so those aspect of New Age music culture really resonate with me."

Christiansen gravitated toward the flute as a kid, taking lessons and eventually playing in school bands and orchestras, but says she "was pretty casual about it for many years." She's only been performing as Sun Swept since 2023. In the intervening two years, though, she's found a local community of like-minded tinkerers, explorers and genre-splicers.

As she explains, "My tastes are pretty eclectic: post-punk, classical, experimental avant-garde, indie. I think I started listening to a lot of ambient music after getting really into the Grateful Dead and then learning about the more psychedelic side of ambient via Deadheads who are into experimental music. The first time I played at Glob, I remember talking to two of the other performers, and all of us were into ambient, metal and the Grateful Dead.

"That felt very Colorado to me," she adds. "I love living here and being part of whatever zeitgeist that is."

Sun Swept's cassette release party for Germinations will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 25, at Glob, 3551 Brighton Boulevard, Denver. Also performing will be Trill Agent, Spices Peculiar and April Maple. Admission is $15. For tickets, visit eventbrite.com. For more info about Sun Swept, visit bandcamp.com.