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Fresh List
Ticketmaster Fresh List 2026: Sei Green
We caught up with Sei Green to talk influences from nature, living around music and the friends we make along the way.
Can you introduce yourselves?
Adam: Hey, I’m Adam from Sei Green.
Ellen: And I’m Ellen.
Adam: And we are Ticketmaster’s Fresh List Artist of the Month.
How did the band start?
Adam: The band sort of started between me and Ellen, kind of just collaborating as two separate artists. And then one night we saw a shooting star on Hallowe’en, and said, “Why don’t we make this a band? So we made our band.
Ellen: He said, “Why don’t we…?” And I was like, no.
Adam: She thought I was gonna ask her out, and then we decided to go for band instead.
How would you describe your music?
Ellen: I would say it’s kind of like a soundscape of space that you can like sit into a groove. We like to try and make somewhere that you can sit into for a while.
Adam: Yeah, maybe a bit of like indie psychedelic rock as well.
Who are your influences?
Ellen: Who are your influences?
Adam: Influences, I guess it’s probably a lot of different time frames in music history. Like, I think both of us like to sit into, like, 70’s music a lot. I think it’s where our influence of, like, having that – it’s not necessarily raw organic – but that sort of feeling to emulate from the 70’s, whether it’s through like certain types of recording. I’d say mainly people like Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye or anyone new.
Ellen: I would say I’m more influenced by what I don’t want to make, because then I don’t want to do that. Adam, you have more like strong influences, I can’t think of people, but I can think of what I don’t want to be. Or just your friends, like we’ve so many musical friends.
Adam: That’s true, yeah, definitely inspired a lot by our friends, yeah, and the people we live with.
Ellen: Yeah, because I live in a house where I’m hearing bass through my floorboard and guitar, I’m hearing like folk music downstairs, and then like bass – or I don’t know what you’d even call that – like next door, so it’s just, yeah, it’s all around.
Where did the name come from?
Ellen: I guess it kind of came from us liking the word Green because green is like a favourite colour of ours. And then Sei, I guess, was kind of coming from your end, right?
Adam: Sei, I think it has meanings in different language, to like be. I think it has a meaning in Japanese and also Italian, which is like “to be”, or “you are”.
Ellen: It sounds like we just came up with that. I feel like we spent like weeks walking around the kitchen, like pointing out things to have be a word. Maybe you can be “chickpeas”, like random stuff. I don’t know why I had just like the sound of what the music was like in my brain, so I was like it needs to sound like the music, and I had some weird word that didn’t make sense, like sounded like “bodega” or something, I was like that’s that’s definitely it, and then Sei Green popped up.
Adam: Yeah, and then it just didn’t leave. It worked in the moment it happened, so I think it just stuck then.
You’ve played a lot of shows this year, what would be your dream venue to play?
Adam: We’d love to play Vicar Street. That’d be nice to, like, get to a point where we could play, I guess, Vicar Street in our own right, to have it as our own show. That’d kind of be a dream. Yeah, I’ve seen so many. I’ve just seen a lot of artists I love in there. Do you know what I mean? So it just has, when I think of it visually, it has a little, like, a warm place in my heart.
Ellen: It’s a good shape,
Adam: Good shape, good shape, too.
Are there any artists in particular that you saw there that you love?
Adam: Thundercat I saw there. Five minute bass solos for every song. I think that’s what caught me.
Ellen: My sister did her college fashion show, there.
Adam: Yeah? That’s sick.
Before you go on stage, what do you like to do? Do you have any backstage rituals?
Adam: I mean, I kind of just like to keep to myself!
Ellen: Trying to recruit everyone into one space, because we’re all kind of wanderers.
Adam: Yeah, we’re a bit wandery. Yeah, our pal Arthur, who plays guitar, he’s a bit of a yogi, so he’s been doing some like breathing exercises.
Ellen: I’m trying to recruit him to be guru.
Adam: The show you did without me, you were doing yoga before.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, we’re trying to get that, that would be pretty cool.
Adam: Yeah, that’d be nice, doing a few stretches before.
Sei Green is a lifestyle?
Adam: It’s exactly that.
There’s a big nature element to a lot of your iconography and your visual style. What kind of influence do your surroundings have on the music that you make?
Adam: I think a lot.
Ellen: Hugely, I would say, because I grew up – and you grew up in the countryside.
Adam: Both of us.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah. So, for me, like, growing up, I would have written with nature, if that makes sense. I guess it sounds a bit cringy to say, but, like, my influences would more be nature rather than artists, because, there’s sounds everywhere, so I’m trying to emulate those sounds in the soundscape. Just like the concept behind a lot of the music is, I guess, that nature naturally takes its own course, and so do the songs, and a lot of that is in the music.
Adam: Yeah, true, yeah, but we also just like to play outside a lot too. Like to set our gear up outside, just play within the trees and stuff.
Do you need a big extension cord?
Adam: Yeah, there is.
Ellen: Also just play like play games.
Adam: Swing ball and stuff, you know?
What was your most memorable experience playing live?
Adam: The headline, I think.
Both (whispering): The headline.
Adam: Yeah, the headline was amazing. We first of all didn’t expect to sell it out and then have people be like DMing us for tickets, being like we actually don’t have them, but this is great, but terrible at the same time. I felt like we had control over it from like a few weeks before up until it, and then when we kind of started, I think we just let ourselves go in it, and it just went well.
Ellen: It felt like, you know, the way when you play a gig, and there’s like the audience and the people playing, but it felt like we weren’t trying to convince anyone. We were at the gig all together. So that was cool. Felt like I could just like enjoy it the same way the crowd did. It’s pretty nice. It was nice. I could stare into Will’s eyes.
If you were putting together a festival, who would play it? What’s your dream festival?
Adam: Oh God, who would be on it. Is it living or dead? Probably living, that’s a stupid question.
It can be dead people too.
Adam: Whoa, dead people?
Ellen: Just dead people.
Adam: Gorillaz would headline it. I’d love to see Paul Simon, I’d love to see Joni Mitchell. I’d love to see Big Thief. I’d love to see then like a jazz range- I’d love to see Nubya Garcia, and Kamasi Washington.
Ellen: Gilberto Gil?
Adam: Oh, I’d love to see Gilberto Gil as well. That’s our dream, because the lads in the band are Brazilian, so we’d love to do a Brazilian show, because we have a lot of Brazilian influences.
Ellen: You can see him just on the street over there playing. New band wise, I’d love to see SAULT, because I think they’ve only done one gig, so that would be pretty cool.
Adam: Who else you listening to? Who’s that guy you really like?
Ellen: Do you know Adam Garrett?
Adam: Yeah. I guess it’d be short enough festival.
How do you approach your songwriting?
Adam: I guess we kind of do it individually, in a sense. But we’re very comfortable approaching it together as well. We live together in a sense, “in a sense”. I live with Ellen’s partner, so Ellen’s there all the time, so we spend a lot of time just kind of messing around with things, or just like, I guess, throwing ideas back and forth. So sometimes it starts from like a single place and then moves into collab, but then sometimes we’re just messing around and we get an idea and then move with it then and there and try and get it done.
Ellen: For me, I feel like, because it happened the other day as well, there’ll be a melody in my brain for like months. It happens to you as well, and then we’ll play something, and it finally matches, and it’s like, oh! You find a place for it and Adam’s like, “that’s really good”, and I’m like, “that’s been in my brain for like six months, man”.
What would be your dream collaboration?
Adam: I know we said Gorillaz, but Damon Albarn would be – just in any capacity, not just Gorillaz – but I think that would be a dream collaboration, you know, perfect. I feel like he would create a perfect soundscape that we would attach onto very nicely… or not. He’s so diverse in what he can do.
Ellen: Does it have to be a singer or songwriter? I’d love to do it with a director, like a filmmaker. That’d be cool. Yeah, would be sick. Who’s that person you were obsessed with? He’s dead.
Adam: Who, Lynch? Yeah, David Lynch. That’d be sick.
Ellen: Someone like that would be, because, I feel like our music, for me, anyways, is kind of a visual thing. It’s not trying to get to a certain sound, it’s trying to get to a certain visual in the music. I don’t mean visual as in video, but like the sound that it makes in your brain, so it’d be really cool to work with a director, and like, have the music be that sound.
What is the best advice you’ve been given?
Adam: You got some good advice recently.
Ellen: I’m a guru. Ah no. I come up with great advice for myself, but no, Holly Munro, she’s a great songwriter. She probably doesn’t remember this, because I don’t know what we were doing at the time, but she gave me really good advice. I’ll copyright her on it, it’s hers, but I feel like I’ve developed it somehow in my brain since, but she was saying, like, during a time when you feel a bit stuck, if you’re playing music, even just to yourself, it exists. So, like, even just to yourself in a bedroom, it’s in the world. So, I guess instead of trying to thrive really far out into the abyss of all the people, if you’re just making something where you’re at and are like really solid in that, it’ll like naturally grow.
Adam: That’s good advice. Yeah. No, actually, give you a bit of advice. Yeah, Ellen’s great at the old advice for me. Yeah, just keep growing. Do you know? Just to bring it on home. Or don’t accept a gig without a cheque in front of you.
If you had to play people one Sei Green track, what would it be?
Adam: It would definitely be something unreleased, but for the sake of release, should we say a released song?
Ellen: ‘Mountain’
Adam: That’d be a good one as an unreleased track.
Ellen: Well, no, it will be released very soon.
Adam: Oh, yeah. Well, maybe that would be a good one. Our next single, ‘Mountain’. That’d be a good one to listen to. We don’t have a date yet, but it will, it will be out in the next like month or two.
What is it about ‘Mountain’ that makes it the song?
Ellen: What makes it the song of the season? I feel like ‘Mountain’ has a lot of what Sei Green is like. Sei Green has went somewhere quite different, not to the outside, because obviously people have only heard three songs, but to us, and ‘Mountain’ has a lot of its essence of what it was at start.
Adam: And what it’s going to be as well.
Ellen: We have also got loads of people through the years that have collaborated on that one
Adam: Yeah, it’s the one song that’s actually been touched by more than just the two of us, so we like that one.
Ellen: It’s good, good summer tune, but it’s also a lot of darkness in it. It’s a good contrast between dark and light, and there’s a great groove. It’s a lovely wee track, a lovely wee track.
What has been the Sei Green career highlight to date?
Ellen: This.
Adam: This. Absolutely, yeah, this, and our headline was great. And then being able to do a show in London was pretty cool, because we didn’t expect to be able to go over like so soon after starting the project. So, yeah, probably three of those all together.
Ellen: For me, it’s Brian, this guy Brian I met the weekend. It was just really nice, he’s in his coffee truck, and he looked out, and he was like, “Sei Green”, and he was really sound. This one’s for Brian.
So Sei Green is about being in the moment and the friends we made along the way?
Ellen: Well, is it?
Adam: It’s about the Brians we pass along the way.
Ellen: Yeah, just the Brians.
Where can the people see you next?
Adam: All Together Now. The Last City Stage. You can catch us at All Together Now at the end of the month.
Ellen: We have a headline. Yep, I would call it more a coming together, and we will come together.
Adam: Or a headline.
Ellen: Yeah, so we’re coming together in 11 September, at The Grand Social. Also there’s a lot of things happening, to be honest, but we can’t say a lot of them yet.
What are your plans for the next year?
Adam (laughing): We’re doing nothing.
Ellen: We’re going on tour with a really big artist.
Adam: We’re not. Manifest it, though.
Ellen: Gorillaz are supporting us next year.
Adam: I think we’re going to get stuck into the production side a lot, really hone in on what we’ve already, I guess, gathered through recording over the last year, and then see where we can push it and take it.
Ellen: I’m thinking of learning the didgeridoo for the September headline.
Adam: You don’t want to miss that.
Sei Green play a headline show at Dublin’s Button Factory on Friday 11 September 2026. You can buy tickets here.
Artists can submit themselves for consideration for the Fresh List here.
