Kyoto-born, Oslo-based artist Sienná returns with her seventh full album, EMA, out September 23rd via Anneis Records, her first new Norwegian release since 2023’s Wa-Kei-Sei-Jyaku. True to the “East-meets-West,” no-rules approach she’s built her career on, working across Europe and Asia alongside collaborators like Nils Petter Molvær, Mick Karn and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, EMA takes its title from the small wooden plaques used in Japanese shrines to communicate with the divine. Sienná treats the nine tracks here as her own version of that practice, songs written down from what she describes as ideas that arrived while walking alone through the mountains. “My songwriting locations for this album were Kibune valley in Kyoto and Ischia island,” she says of the process behind it, describing the writing itself as something closer to transcription than composition, messages received rather than constructed.
This album is pure genius, a transformative and colorful experience that moves from ambient trip-hop style songs like opener “Be A Seeker, Believer” to genuinely danceable tracks like “Your Facts, My Facts,” the kind that make it impossible not to get up and move, and on to cinematic, harmonically dense pieces like “Aenaria” that lean fully into the signature Japanese harmonic movements running through Sienná‘s music, in a style that recalls Ryuichi Sakamoto. It’s a remarkably diverse record from end to end.
One standout moment is “A Messenger,” built around an addictive, simple rhythm, but the spoken-word lyrics layered against tense, suspended harmony make it a genuinely gripping listen. The track’s message is worth experiencing without spoilers, but it carries real spiritual and philosophical weight, punctuated by genuinely surprising musical interludes.
That range across the album, from spacious ambience to full dancefloor energy to spoken-word introspection, fits an artist whose whole philosophy is built around resisting fixed structure in favor of following an idea wherever it leads. Lead single “Be A Seeker, Believer” sets that tone early with its themes of resilience and self-belief, aiming to restore some hope in what Sienná calls a beautiful but sad world, and the rest of EMA follows through on that promise across its full nine-track run, from “369 (Miroku)” and “Finding Inner Sanctuary” through to closer “From Here to Where You Are.” For an artist this committed to genre-defying exploration, this is a genuinely cohesive and immersive listen despite covering so much ground, one that rewards the kind of patient, full attention it clearly asks of the listener.