Played, recorded, produced and mixed entirely by Suse in her Glasgow studio, Alter will be released on June 10, 2022 on limited-edition vinyl and digital platforms. Susan Bear’s debut album Creature – featuring the widely Spotify playlisted track ‘Floating’ – was released in 2020 (“Gentle, dreamy mood music” – The Scotsman). Suse recently completed a UK tour with Field Music.

Of the story behind Alter, Suse writes:

“In 2020 I had a listen back to a bunch of things I’d made over the last few years and realised they were all kind of about the same thing. Generally, Alter’s about observing the past from a safe place in the present and trying to realise that sometimes change is okay.

“When I was younger, I had a few negative sudden changes to my life that were quite shocking. In my adult life I’ve found change out with my control to be sometimes very scary, but over the last few years I’ve tried to be more okay with the world changing around me and consciously making decisions that change my path instead of letting life just happen to me. In Alter I am consolidating my experiences and memories, dealing with grief, and saying goodbye to the past (a little bit, or trying to), accepting it and moving forward. I’m looking at the last 10 years from a zoomed-out place and seeing how it fitted together. I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago, I’m actively trying to change and grow. Sometimes it feels so much easier to stay exactly the same, do exactly the same things in the same way, but life is more exciting when you ‘make an effort’ generally, isn’t it? Even if it feels a bit painful at the time.

“I wrote Alter in a similar way to Creature, the songwriting and production spanning a relatively long time. I’m not one for sitting down and writing a batch of songs in a oner. For this project, I enjoyed wee production experiments, thought experiments, and splurging creatively when I feel like I really wanted to or needed to. This album is like a journal, like Creature was, just maybe a bit more focussed and from a point of reflection. I find making music like this quite therapeutic, it helps me make sense of my thoughts. These songs are from 2017ish to 2020 I reckon.

“I’ve been doing some collaboration out with my own music which has been great, but through that I realised how much I enjoy using my own material to try things out and fully express myself exactly how I want, and to make the final piece of music sound as similar as I can to how it does in my head. I enjoy doing the writing, production, recording, and mixing myself in my studio – it’s part of the fun for me of this project.”