Sonae is an ambient Electronic artist from Cologne Berlin. “Far Away is Right Around the Corner” is her 10 track debut album on LPMonika Enterprise82 Berlin. She released previous EP’s in 2012, and 2013 and has performed at Berlin’s ‘Perspectives festival’. She is an ‘active member of female:pressure an international network of female artists in electronic music’.
I did not get the everyday life transmission which the album is meant to be about- one can sense the reflective nature, but the soundscape world is much more otherworldly with a strong thematic glitch thread. The album uses freesound.org samples.
Cio Dor Distanz propels me to the Starship Enterprise, then becomes a beautiful cascading piano waterfall. The tone changes and becomes ominous, we have entered a mysterious other world where creatures unimagined lay in wait. Einfach So strips back to a biomechanical heartbeat amidst a static netherworld. “Far Away is Right Around the Corner” conveys a sense of distance, and at the same time loosens the moors or reality amidst confusion making for fertile voyage. I get the overwhelming sense of lone life forms trying to break through.
Gewitterspaziergang returns us to the static glitch – mid range drone searing through the landscape like a vessel searching for a lost crew. A perfect sci fi score. Hot Summer Day or static threads, birds sing, but it is not a happy place- rather it calls with longing. Are we in strange dream? Sounds are used in a curious manner and seem to sweep from place to place, the record always on repeat, the experience unable to replay what they are seeking. I know a Fish we feel aquatic and wonder at the meaning of existence, the pace quickens as if we are floating back up to the surface amidst a stream of bubbles.
Not the Moon – I don’t see any flowers there, returns us to static and a low sub bass pounding in a dreamlike rumination – our thread to life, womblike. Song of Joy and Hate begins with a dissonant piano in bass, conveying the displeasure of life, probably the most powerful human expression so far. I wonder at the pouter landscape of this world. Ueberwindung evoked the Martian landscape rover mission transmiting back from deep space.
Wandering the closing track announces the human presence at last, as we geo-locate, with hints of the memory of the raid of an air raid sirens shrill droning, sweeping the landscape clear. We are told about emergency exits in an ominous way what are we being prepared for? Beyond these doors of perception. We morph and shift the female presence greets us at the end. “Far Away Is Right Around the Corner,” is an interesting exploration of inner and outer space.
Text by Catherine Meeson