MISHA SEEFF: DREAMHAVEN
This episode of Big Blend Radio features Misha Seeff, a highly accomplished and talented teen singer-songwriter who has just released his debut album DREAMHAVEN. Watch the podcast here in the YouTube player or download/listen to the podcast on SoundCloud or Podbean.
Misha Seeff grew up in Canada, the US, and South Africa. His music has a classic acoustic pop sound, and he uses pictographic lyrics to tell stories both fictional and true. His debut album DREAMHAVEN brings listeners into a world of fictional love stories, poetic lyrics, and lush melodies. Featuring instrumentals reminiscent of classic 2000s bands and innovative vocal engineering, DREAMHAVEN feels like a perfect mix of the old and new.
For Misha, music is an escape. It’s how he makes sense of the world around him, and how he deals with and expresses his emotions. He particularly loves telling stories through song. The first song that Misha ever wrote was called “apart,” a ballad that conveys the pain and longing of being far away from someone you love. Misha knew this was a universal experience for people around the world, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, and he understood that music could be one of the most powerful ways of sharing that experience.
DREAMHAVEN includes the first songs the teenage singer-songwriter ever wrote, such as “apart” and “valentine’s day,” and more recent work such as “april haze” and “your eyes.” The album was produced, recorded, and mixed by Ben Bernstein at Soniczen Records and Petting Zoo Studio in Oakland, CA, with additional vocal recording by Mark Ambrosino at The Madhouse in Queens, NY. DREAMHAVEN also features guitar work by Dave Shul, bass by Ben Bernstein, and drums and percussion from Andrew Griffin.
Misha says, “Telling fictional stories and turning them into music is one of the ways I process things happening in my life.” In his opinion, an amazing album has a song for everyone, so whether you’re enjoying love, stuck in heartbreak, or moving on, this album is for you. “If nothing else, producing the record was a massive growth experience,” says Misha. “I learned that one of the things people appreciate most about music is vulnerability, that magical moment where you can think deeper than the music and see what the artist was going through when they wrote the song. I wanted to reflect that.” Whether you’re listening to the calm heartbreak ballad “boardwalk” or the feel-good “dream,” Misha’s lyrics shine deeper than the surface-level message.
From a young age Misha had a passion for music and spent much of his childhood participating in community musical theater, taking violin lessons, and teaching himself how to play the piano. Misha began to experiment with writing his own original songs when the theaters went dark during the Covid-19 pandemic. He taught himself how to record and produce tracks and wrote most of his songs in his room on guitar and piano, with no idea he would ever professionally produce or release his material. The title track “dreamhaven” says it all in terms of what the album is about: thoughts and ideas collecting over time and being kept safe in a small corner of the mind.
More: www.mseeff.com