The Sei release cinematic 'Lumen' EP

Combining music, meditation, and contemporary dance, Stacey Gill and choreographer Maria Nilsson Waller created The Sei. They are chiefly about allowing women to explore and heal via the medium of new artistic endeavours. Nilsson Waller is primarily a dancer, and Gill is primarily a musician, but the two found a creative home for themselves when they began working together.

"We really clicked", says Nilsson Waller.  "We shared a worldview, and an interest in similar themes".
"We had an almost identical experience not just in our professional, but also our personal lives", adds Gill.

Lumen is the result of their creativity, a combined soundtrack of 'The River' and 'Lumen', two dance shows choreographed by Nilsson Waller. Lumen invites you into a cinematic soundscape with otherworldly vocals, and aims to showcase the healing properties of combined arts. "I've been making music for twelve years," says Gill, "and it wasn't until I found dance that everything began to make sense. I'm from a working class background, this was really far away from where I was raised. I cringed at contemporary dance before".

The songs on Lumen are occasionally longer than 15 minutes, but were "made in a meditative way", according to Gill. EP opener 'Asteroid' was played as a meditation piece in workshops, but later became more central to the project when Gill's friend Jackie Byrne chose to dance to it in a video.

"People's attention is very valuable. It's been distracted, and I'm hoping this music will be a kind of soundtrack that people can put on, and without knowing, tune into themselves," says Gill. I think we all need that right now. Listen to the EP below.