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"Songs that felt like a place you could step into" - Sebastien Heintz on the Immersive World of OVERSEA's 'BEYOND'

Sebastien Heintz takes us inside OVERSEA's BEYOND - an immersive journey where sound becomes architecture, nature becomes texture, and listening becomes an exploration of consciousness.

By Chris RoditisMusicngear Lead Editor

The project of Sebastien Heintz lives somewhere between cinematic ambient, electro-acoustic sound, field recordings and consciousness research, turning sound into something almost physical: a place to inhabit, wander through and experience from the inside. His latest album, BEYOND, is a 45-minute journey built from seven interconnected chapters, where electronic textures meet the organic unpredictability of nature.

We spoke with Sebastien about the sound architectures behind BEYOND, the instruments and technology that helped shape its world, his fascination with psychoacoustics and consciousness, and the impossible landscapes that can exist when music becomes more than something you simply listen to.

Listen while you read

Chris Roditis, Musicngear: BEYOND feels like stepping into another state of awareness. At what point did you realize you weren't interested in simply writing songs anymore, but in creating immersive listening experiences that invite people to perceive sound differently?

Songs and sound have always been intertwined for me. Sound has always been a huge part of my songs, so moving toward more immersive music wasn't really a conscious choice.

I remember being on tour in Australia in 2019 and starting to experiment a lot more with ambient sound than I had before. Everyone in the band, at soundchecks, kept telling me: "You should release this. It's unique, it's really you." So I did.

And looking back, I'd say I became drawn to sound architectures: songs that felt like a place you could step into and have an experience in, rather than something you just relate to or enjoy. It became about stepping into the music itself, working with immersive art exhibitions, and pushing sonic perspectives into something more explorative, experimental, psychedelic even.

It evolved organically, at a time when I was also working closely with the consciousness exploration scene: neuroscience, hypnotherapy, psychedelic-assisted therapy, meditation. The more I worked on this kind of music, these sound places, this sound architecture, the more natural it felt to live inside those sound worlds. Sound has always been at the center of how I make music, an internal and external research to chase what I'm hearing in my head and find a way to offer that to listeners. And today I feel a real pull, and a real rise in demand, for that kind of deep, immersive, profound listening experience.

Musicngear: You describe sound design and spatial architecture as tools rather than decoration. When you're building a piece, are you thinking like a composer, a producer, or almost like an architect shaping an invisible environment people can inhabit?

I'd say I wear all three hats. Composition has always mattered a lot to me. I love drone music, and the tradition it draws from: Indian spiritual music, and more recent modern electronic ambient music. It was always important to bring in real composition, chordal structures, complex harmonies, without making them over the top or inaccessible. I'm still very interested in writing songs, so what I release feels like a mix between a song and a sonic place. The two go together for me now. So yes, composer and producer, definitely.

And producer and architect go together too, because the way I produce is very architectural. I use Ableton almost like a 3D, 4D, 5D-plus tool to build the song, the sound, the place I want to create. I use field recordings, but I also go very deep into production detail.

With BEYOND especially, which felt like one continuous trip, I needed every section of the journey to feel like a natural organism, like all the sounds were one living, organic tapestry. Everything had to feel specific and intentional, but also organic and moving. A lot of what I'm chasing is trying to work with Ableton and instruments the way nature works: random at times, but everything necessary, everything in its place. That mix is what builds these metaphysical sonic places.

I use Ableton almost like a 3D, 4D, 5D-plus tool to build the song, the sound, the place I want to create

Musicngear: Your work draws from psychoacoustics, neuroscience and consciousness research without ever feeling clinical. How do you translate scientific ideas into something deeply emotional instead of letting the concepts overshadow the music?

For me, science, neuroscience, psychoacoustics, and psychological research are tools to nourish creativity and push what music can be: to push past the idea that music is "just" entertainment. I think music is a profound medicine, central to any therapeutic or ancestral tradition.

What matters to me is bringing those tools back to composition: using the instrument to make the sound behave like a living organism. I want my sound to feel like looking into a deep forest. Everything grows, everything moves, but slowly, ever-changing, without being clinical, perfect in nature's own way.

That's really how I write, produce, and mix. These tools are there to serve something more therapeutic, more immersive, but it still has to come from nature. I've been very drawn to the Tao Te Ching, and that's what goes into a song for me. Without sounding too woo-woo, it's almost a spiritual experience, and I want it to feel that way.

Musicngear: BEYOND unfolds as one uninterrupted journey rather than a collection of individual tracks. Was there ever a temptation to make the pieces more self-contained, or was preserving that continuous narrative non-negotiable from the very beginning?

I started BEYOND right after releasing my previous EP, Music for a Contemplative Mind, Volume 1, and I thought I was just making a Volume 2: another EP, a few songs, not necessarily related, just a nice collection sitting together. But the more I wrote, produced, and recorded, the more I noticed the unconscious choices I was making, all pointing toward one full journey. It was only about three songs in that I realized I wasn't making an EP, I was making one long-form piece. It felt almost like magic.

Once I started putting the songs together, they felt like a journey, like places you'd move through in a psychedelic experience. It's very connected to psychedelic therapy music. What I find interesting is that the usual trade-off with long-format journeys is that the individual songs stop working outside that context. With BEYOND, all seven chapters still work as standalone pieces. So there's a kind of double life to them: they work alone, but their power multiplies a thousand times when they're heard together, in that order.

A lot of work went into getting the order right, into making the transitions between songs fold into each other, and into making sure the field recordings and the nature elements felt like one continuous, organic movement, evolving without ever repeating itself or losing momentum.

A lot of what I'm chasing is trying to work with Ableton and instruments the way nature works: random at times, but everything necessary, everything in its place.

Musicngear: Many producers spend years collecting synthesizers, processors and instruments in search of their sound. Looking back, was there a particular piece of gear or perhaps an unexpected recording technique that fundamentally changed the way you approached the sonic world of OVERSEA?

There are a few milestone moments that pushed me naturally toward the OVERSEA sound. The first was getting my Strymon Big Sky and Strymon Timeline, and starting to explore soundscapes through reverb and ambient guitar. That was my first step, coming from a more traditional blues, psychedelic, funk, and rock background.

Another big moment: I was at Tileyard Studios in London working on another project, and a friend lent me his original Korg MS-20. I was completely mesmerized by that sound. It was my first real exposure to analog synthesis. I bought my own MS-20 right after leaving the studio, and that opened a whole path. Then came a Teenage Engineering OP-1, and then, most importantly, the Prophet-6, which is on every one of my projects and remains my favorite synth I've ever owned.

For BEYOND specifically, and for the music I'm making now, chasing that natural, slowly-shifting, living-organism feeling, the Osmose by Expressive E has been a beautiful tool. As a guitarist, I'd always felt that classic keyboards were missing a certain expressive capability, something closer to what you get from strings under your fingers. Being able to bring that same guitarist's expressivity into a synthesizer gave me an even deeper love for the world of synthesis.

Last thing worth mentioning: Ableton. I grew up on Pro Tools, got it at 12, then moved to Logic Pro once I was in the UK. I only started using Ableton from 2020, mostly for live, and quickly realized it felt more like a modular machine than any other DAW I'd used. It opened up my creativity and production massively. Ableton is deeply part of how I build these soundscapes now. I'm inspired by how modular, alive, and breathing it feels.

Musicngear: Imagine BEYOND is an actual place somewhere beyond our world, a landscape listeners could physically enter. What would they discover there? What laws would that world follow that ours doesn't?

That's such a beautiful question. To me, BEYOND holds the beauty of our world, but more ecstatic, more vibrant, more amplified. The colors, the smell, the nature: as beautiful as here, but without our filters, so we could see life and reality as they truly are.

I believe we only see a tiny fragment of the beauty of this world, and that there's so much more than meets the eye. BEYOND is that. If you've ever experienced a psychedelic or transcendental state through breathwork, meditation, or hypnosis, you know you're seeing more: a wider spectrum of color, form, connection. That's what BEYOND was made for: an invitation to reconnect with that part of ourselves that already lives in us.

As for the law that world would follow: non-duality. That we are pure consciousness, one and the same energy field. I believe deeply in the idea that consciousness is something you can access and expand, widen the spectrum of it, and that's what BEYOND, as a transcendental experience, was built for.

There'd be no need for rule or reign in that world. It would simply be universal, compassionate, loving. Without sounding too hippie or utopian, I really do think this is possible. If we gave ourselves the time, daily, to connect more deeply with ourselves, to nourish love, compassion, kindness, mindfulness, we could widen that part of our lives here too. Non-duality would be the path, the key to relating to one another with more respect and love.

Science, neuroscience, psychoacoustics, and psychological research are tools to nourish creativity and push what music can be

Musicngear: If you could choose the perfect conditions for someone experiencing BEYOND for the very first time, not just the room or the speakers, but their state of mind, the time of day, even what they leave behind before pressing play, what would that experience look like?

The state of mind I'd invite someone into for their first listen, especially as a full journey, is an open, psychonaut mind. An exploration of consciousness.

Take a few deep breaths first. Lie down on grass, or somewhere cozy. Use those breaths to land in the experience, to be present enough to really be taken by the songs and the journey. That breathing lets you leave behind the noise of daily life, the mind chatter, the pressure, the stress, and give yourself less than an hour just for you, to explore your own consciousness and stay open to altered states.

A good sound system or nice headphones, obviously. But mostly: being open and present. BEYOND is a call for deep listening: of the music, but also of the music as a mirror of yourself. Maybe have something to journal in, something to write the experience down in, something you can return to later. And if someone wants extra support from certain psychedelic medicines while listening, I'd recommend that too.

Musicngear: Is there a sound you've spent years trying to create but still haven't managed to capture: a texture, a feeling or an impossible sonic illusion that continues to haunt your imagination?

There are plenty of sounds I'm still chasing, most of them from nature, in its most pristine, divine form. I'm still trying to find an honest way to translate what I see in nature into electroacoustic music.

But if I had to name one: the flickering of sunlight on water. The way water reflects it, breaks it into prisms, it's magic, and it's something I keep chasing, keep trying to build in electronic music. If you have the recipe, send it over.

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About Chris Roditis

Chris Roditis has been an active musician since 1995 in various bands and projects across a variety of genres ranging from acoustic, electronic to nu metal, british rock and trip hop. He has extensive experience as a mixing engineer and producer and has built recording studios for most of the projects he has been involved with. His passion for music steered his entrepreneurial skills into founding MusicNGear in 2012.

Contact Chris Roditis at chrisroditis@musicngear.com

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