Astrid Sonne

About

" Elliptical, elusive and boundary-breaking experimental pop "

Restlessly creative, Danish-born and London-based composer Astrid Sonne blends the worlds of classical, trip-hop, and electronica, crafting various moods.  With her viola – her confidant since her early musical years and protagonist in her work – alongside the electro-acoustic elements she adds, she creates a post-20th-century sonic universe. Much like the title of her track ‘Everything Is unreal’, from her newest album ‘Great Doubt’ (out in January 2024 via Escho), Astrid creates elliptical and elusive musical sketches that are certainly boundary-breaking and feel almost unreal. She has occasionally expressed how difficult she finds writing lyrics, and this could be the reason she previously preferred making principally instrumental music. In ‘Great Doubt’, though, vocals and lyrics are used as additional instruments: her serene voice fits the eerie mood of the album.

From her debut album, ‘Human Lines’ (2018), Astrid gave some fine examples of how she can create as much tension with her use of pauses (‘Also’) as she does within her compositions (‘Life’). Even the titles of her tracks suggest how otherworldly, hypnotic and sometimes mysteriously disturbing her music is (as on ‘Overexisting’). In her second full-LP, ‘Outside of Your Lifetime’ (2021), she mixes keys and strings, software and hardware, natural and synthetic components, making musical algorithms in mostly short pieces (the viola-based ‘Greener’ is less than two minutes, in contrast to the choir-based ‘Field of Grass’). Astrid offers an amazing study in tension and calmness, and her work is a captivating listening experience.