laetitia sonami / éliane radigue: a song for two mothers / occam ix

Black Truffle presents A Song for two Mothers/Occam IX, the first ever solo release from Laetitia Sonami. Born in France in 1957, Sonami studied with Éliane Radigue in Paris before moving to California in 1978 to study electronic music at Mills College. Sonami is perhaps most closely associated with one of her inventions, the Lady's Glove, an arm-length tailored glove fitted with movement sensors allowing the performer fluidly to control digital sound parameters and processing, as well as motors, lights and video playback. Having performed with the Lady's Glove for 25 years, Sonami retired it in 2016, turning her attention to the interface/instrument heard and pictured here, the Spring Sprye. After decades of aversion to documenting her work on recordings, A Song for two Mothers/Occam IX treats listeners to two side-long performances with the Spring Spyre: the very first piece developed for the instrument and the most recent, the two contrasting remarkably in sound palette, energy and form. "A Song for two Mothers" (2023) spins an intricate web of rippling synthetic burbles, rapid sweeps and fizzing textures. Performed in real time with the sensitive and partly uncontrollable Spring Sprye, the music is delicate yet chaotic. Abrupt gestures hover against a backdrop of silence, "devoid of spatial or temporal direction." After several minutes, the sound-world becomes metallic and percussive, tapping and ticking in pointillistic flurries before a wavering harmonic cloud emerges, sprinkled with resonant drips and pops. "Occam IX" is a radically different proposition. At the outset of Sonami's exploration of the Spring Sprye, she asked her former teacher Éliane Radigue to compose a piece for it -- and her: like all of Radigue's work since she ceased working with analogue electronics at the beginning of the 21st century, "Occam IX" is written not only for an instrument but also for a particular performer. These scores are developed verbally, through meetings and conversations between performer and composer; each is grounded in an image (usually kept from listeners, to avoid influencing their experience); all magnify the subtlest acoustic phenomena and require great commitment and patience from the performer. Beginning from a rumbling low tone, the listener is gradually immersed in slowly lapping waves of synthetic tones, eventually thinning out into delicate bell-like pings against a background of white noise. Accompanied by notes from Sonami, her longtime collaborator Paul DeMarinis, and Radigue, and illustrated with scores, photographs and images of the Spring Spyre, A Song for Two Mothers/Occam IX is an essential document celebrating an under-recognized pioneer of electronic music and performance.