You could totally be next to me is an intimate portrait of cross-continental friendship. Interdisciplinary artist and musician Jenny Berger Myhre lives in Bergen, Norway; producer Camila de Laborde a.k.a. Opuntia lives in Mexico City. For more than a decade, the artists have maintained their closeness by exchanging voice memos. That’s enough recordings to start a library, but in four tracks, Berger Myhre has curated an emotionally poignant and sonically spacious rendering of many lovely years.
Well, four or eight tracks, depending on how you look at it. First, we hear Berger Myhre’s four gentle and evocative soundscapes enveloping the dreamstate voice memos Opuntia recorded in early morning moments. Then, Berger Myhre’s music is presented on its own, transforming from a gauzy shroud around Opuntia’s narration into one standalone side of the conversation. If you start with the solo music then listen to the spoken word versions — or if you listen to the album on a loop — the music starts to reveal the welcoming heart that Berger Myhre keeps open to receive Opuntia’s sleepy thoughts.
The two surreal and grounded track groupings are each about 30 minutes, structured with the energetic arc of a pleasant holiday. On Blind me with light, we awake with Opuntia to wind sounds, synth, and barely perceptible harmonium. At one moment, she talks about her favorite breakfast of coffee and bananas; the next, she remembers fainting at her grandmother’s funeral. But cradled by Berger Myhre’s music, the narration flows seamlessly through memories, observations, and short stories about daily life.
On the next track, haunting violin melodies and a languid double bass curl around a foreboding dream that transforms into a meditation on lost artistic ideas. We’re coaxed out of our relaxed state by benign piano chords and plucked double bass that punctuates the pools of undulating synth and electronics. The track title — Death doesn’t leave my dreams — is a direct quotation from the voice memo, but the friendship is clearly a bulwark against nightmares and heavy thoughts. “This is really nice,” Opuntia says. “You could totally be next to me.”
In Toms, hi-hats, everything, a thrumming drum machine “changes the whole mood — the whole energy” and propels us forward while Optunia’s musings on agency, perception, and life’s rhythms float over the top. Berger Myhre edits the voice memos differently here, overlapping fragments that fade in and out as playful beeps, boops, and water sounds bubble below. But on The day will come somehow, we realize that Opuntia’s voice has been almost constantly accompanied by electronics, strings, synth, and gentle harmonium. Stark chunks of silence shift the album’s direction: suddenly there is nothing but her voice and gaps in sound before a simple piano line enters with double bass. “It’s hard to wake up in winter, but the day will come somehow,” she says as Berger Myhre sings distant, breathless solo melodies in the background.
When comparing the spoken word and instrumental-only versions of each track, Toms, hi-hats, everything presents a particularly interesting contrast. Berger Myhre’s electronics, tape loops, and drum machine are repetitive yet energized, slightly entrancing yet clear and insistent. When Opuntia is narrating, her ruminations on the fleeting nature of life frame the listener’s experience of the underlying rhythms in a deeply philosophical way. Opuntia’s version comes first on the album, so we encounter the music through her personal lens before hearing Berger Myhre’s solo composition. The instrumental version, with our mental echoes of Opuntia still lingering, helps us imagine how her presence influences Berger Myhre’s artmaking and life.
Like a true friendship, this sonic collaboration traverses wild and wonderful emotional terrain. The full album, released Dec. 5, 2025 on Take It Easy Policy, is just as enjoyable in one sitting as it is on a loop or track shuffle. Opuntia’s astonishingly honest and delicate thoughts find a complementary, responsive home in Berger Myhre’s music. You could totally be next to me is an inspiring and glowing addition to the magical vault of eternal, illuminating artist friendships.
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