Astrid Sonne - Outside Of Your Lifetime

Second full-length release from the Danish composer Astrid Sonne, highlighted by Bandcamps Miles Bowe "not only like Sonne’s best work, but an exciting step for this collective as a whole", referring to a Copenhagen based network of musicians which Astrid Sonne is a vital part of, consisting of artists like Smerz, ML Buch, Erika de Casier and Clarissa Connelly.

Astrid Sonne grew up on the island of Bornholm, out in the middle of the Baltic Sea. Her connection to the outside world is tangible and textured, informing her experiential electronic designs, the latest of which achieves an apex synergy of sublime synthetic humanism: outside of your lifetime.

Comprised of 10 concise tracks, the album moves with a precision elegance that belies its improvisational origins. Keys and strings, software and hardware, drones and choral harmonies are deployed with fluency and mystery, both hinting at and hiding elusive narratives within their waveforms.

For Outside Of Your Lifetime, Sonne brings in even more acoustic instruments, providing space for electric guitar (played by ML Buch), organ (featuring Minais B) and vocals (Sonne, Buch and Tobias Kropp) to naturally breathe in unison with the refined electronic sculptures and with Sonne own instrument: the viola. The pieces variously evoke sequencers tethered to esoteric algorithms, fugues in flux, veiled devotionals, and fiercely propulsive free jazz.

Whether this record is about the natural world or human relationships, the lessons are similar: experience accumulates, both as memories and ghosts in the machine. There is no forecasting the future; technology will not bring us closer to tomorrow. Feel something real, make something new, then send it on its way: “To have and not to hold.”