Dennis album artwork by Aidan Zamiri
"Sega wearing his heart firmly on his sleeve as he finds ballads within ostensibly club textures" The FADER
"a troubled and beautiful piece of rave-inflected electronic pop" PAPER Magazine
“Sega Bodega is nothing if not versatile” Resident Advisor
"floating hypnotic choral harmonies over weaving break-beats and ethereal synths" Office Magazine
Dennis PRE-SAVE/ORDER: https://segabodega.sup.nr/dennis
"Elk Skin" LISTEN: https://segabodega.sup.nr/e-sPR
(March 25th, 2024) - Today in-demand Paris/London-based artist and producer Sega Bodega announces his third studio album Dennis, out April 26th via his own new label ambient tweets. Alongside the announcement he shares a new single "Elk Skin."
Dennis came together following an experience of mania, manifested in spikes of euphoria, sleepless nights, and surrender to impulse. The difference between "reality" and this mind-altered state felt paper-thin. “The intention with this album was to create a feeling of being as disorientated as I was for the past couple of years,” he shares. The experience made Navarrete interrogate what we believe to be "reality": “With AI and technology moving as fast as it is, I can imagine the possibility of making 'worlds' with 'people' inside who don’t know they’re not real. Who’s to say that I’m not already one of them?”
The new album explores the experience of a day in which you can’t be sure you woke up at all. Each song blends into the next as you sink deeper into REM sleep. Even in slumber, your brain is animated by the synaptic sparks between nerve cells that mimic wakefulness. Breathing becomes fast and irregular. Your heart rate and blood pressure increase. Your eyes move rapidly behind closed lids. You dream. Dennis is a translation of how this feels.
Sega Bodega’s records have always lent themselves to introspective listening as easily as they fill dancefloors, but with Dennis, the intention is to go harder: this is a club record to lose yourself in. “Adulter8” begins with the tinker of an 8-bit alarm clock before spiriting you away into a dazzling, drop-heavy floor filler; voices emerge into the light before receding back into the dark they came from. And “Elk Skin,” which calls on vocalist Cecile Believe, is a dislocating blend of euphoric highs, Mediterranean guitar rhythms, and subterranean chanting. The editing of Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018), disorientating and abruptly shifting, influenced the sonic whiplash of this album.
Even though he insists that his own abstract lyrics and storytelling follow the same scrambled logic, parts of himself can’t help but emerge. “Set Me Free I’m An Animal” is a warped reimagining of folk music; monastic vocals take on an unsettling quality that brushes shoulders with horror. He began writing from the perspective of a dog who wanted to run away, but upon reflection, it started to morph into a wider statement of wanting to abandon a relationship when the desire to leave isn’t well understood.
Other tracks orbit around a defining image. “Deer Teeth” was inspired by a 7000-year-old Mesolithic burial of a woman and her baby who had died in childbirth in Vedbæk, Denmark. They were found with 200 deer teeth; the baby was cradled in the wing of a swan. This trance-like track, calling on the voice of Kiss Facility counterpart Mayah Alkhateri, twists sweet melodies into something with an unsettling, metallic flavor. It’s both of the future and yet, at the same time, recalls something far more primordial.
Navarrete also embraces the Chilean element of his Irish dual heritage. For other artists, including his production for Caroline Polachek’s “Sunset,” he lavished the track with a warm Mediterranean guitar and punctuating handclaps, and on Dennis, he draws on those influences this time for himself. The track “Tears and Sighs” is a reclamation of these rhythms filtered through a nocturnal lens: the wind-up trance drop crests into inky acoustic guitars.
Sega Bodega has just finished a 6-week Lose Yourself with.. Sunday night residency on BBC 6Music with guests such as Shygirl, BEA1991, POiSON GiRL FRiEND, and Marina Herlop — listen back to all episodes so far HERE. Navarrete’s ambitions aren’t easily contained. His irreplicable sound has been woven into the production of pop disruptors including Eartheater, Caroline Polachek, and Shygirl, on her Mercury Prize-nominated record Nymph. Alongside co-founding the underground music collective NUXXE and contributing production to Björk and Rosalía’s collaborative single “Oral,” he has also formed the project Kiss Facility with Emirati-Egyptian artist Mayah Alkhateri – yet another avenue of his expression.
Pre-save/order Dennis and listen to "Elk Skin" above and stay tuned for more from Sega Bodega coming soon.
Upcoming Live Dates
Tickets
05/31 - Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Festival 07/11 - Gräfenhainichen, GER @ Melt Festival 07/18 - Dour, BELG @ Dour Festival 08/24 - London, ENG @ Field Day Festival 11/01 - Torino, IT @ C2C Festival
Sega Bodega Dennis April 26, 2024 1. Coma Dennis 2. Adulter8 3. Elk Skin 4. Kepko 5. Dirt 6. Set Me Free, I’m An Animal 7. Deer Teeth 8. True 9. Tears & Sighs 10. Humiliation Doesn’t Leave A Mark 11. Coma Salv
About Sega Bodega: Born in Ireland, raised in Glasgow and now based in Paris, producer, performer, and label head Sega Bodega - AKA Salvador Navarrete - has built a reputation as one of the UK’s most innovative and precocious creative minds. His impact spans music, fashion, and film, soundtracking some of the most important cultural moments in recent years, as well as building a catalog of solo releases that traverse genre, style, and composition.
In late 2022, Sega released the 6Music playlisted single "Kepko" closely followed by a remix of Björk's "Ovule" in early 2023. Sega Bodega’s last full release - 2021’s Romeo - showcases an otherworldly production style that has marked him as a pioneer within the alternative and electronic worlds. A true multi-hyphenate, alongside his two solo albums, Bodega has been a crucial hand in countless projects over the past decade, from the development of artists under his NUXXE label, to production for other artists, and work with fashion brands such as Bottega Veneta and Nike. | 
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