Soramimi – The World Trembles In My Hands
(Oslated, 2021-06-04)
On the left side, the Musique Concrète, which emerged in the ’40s, consisting of playing with recorded sounds and effects, and eventually getting decent instrumental music out of the experimentation; a movement that inspired some of our hypnotic techno stalwarts, such as Claudio PRC who confessed it in our article for Orb Mag.
On the right side, the Berlin-based label Horo, whose peculiar sound signature gave the atmospheric techno a new – massive – emotional twist, with impactful percussions and sonorities, rooted in the Asian ethnic and traditional culture.
Right in the middle, Soramimi from New York…
Identifying her music between the two above-mentioned worlds is eventually too simplistic, or scandalous, because, in a scene mainly composed of followers and creators, she definitely belongs to the second genre, having set “the creation” at the centre of her life, both professionally and artistically. However, she does have a childlike fascination for the sounds and effects, for instance, while contemplating and admiring a David Lynch or Ryuichi Sakamoto movie, with the ears as much as with the eyes.
Like the Musique Concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, she also has “a pleasure room” made of numerous gear to experiment, with maybe the difference that a deeper musicality is singing in her mind, and she just uses the tools to express it without being over-fascinated by them.
The evocation of the Musique Concrète is however still relevant, as some of its artists – no matter how “scientists” they look or sound like – also show some natural musicality, thinking for instance of Zoviet France, the mythic British duo who admittedly had – and still has – the “Music Factor”.
About Horo: another audacious sophism can be made with Soramimi being also the co-founder of “Dusk Records” with her partner Cory James, mainly to release their own work: in 2019, they exceptionally invited another producer, ASC, in an epic VA and, well, ASC is not very unfamiliar to Horo…
In the end, by being – more or less admittedly – set “in the middle”, Soramimi has somehow softened the sound of Horo while keeping its intensity, and added more musicality to the Musique Concrète’s type of experimentation. By that, she has succeeded to create her own style, which merges various worlds to form a new one, highly artistic and interesting.
She’s now making her debut on the poetic label “Oslated” with “The World Trembles In My Hands”, a very impressive album. “Oslated” is probably the best platform to welcome such a work, with its particular organic and deep artistic-oriented vision, also highlighted by the talented Clément Davout, in charge of the artwork.
Like Clément Davout, Soramimi is also a painter, and like Davout’s project “Adhémar”, she’s also capable to convey beautiful images to her sonic journeys, for “those who can watch the sound”. While atmospheric techno is made to transport the listeners to new territories, she brings them very far, thanks to a generous sound design that can be found in each track of the album. “The World Trembles In My Hands” is a bundle of masterpieces, containing the marks of the true creators: rich, subtle and intriguing soundscapes with, for the outro, a smart remix by Cory James, that keeps the global journey consistent.
If the album was played in front of an audience, its efficient trippy effect brought by the flow and the deep drones would for sure connect the listeners together in a trance state, illustrating perfectly what another New Yorker, the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks, has once said in an interview (RIP):
It reminds me an old term used in the early days of hypnosis: “neurogamy” – the marriage of nervous systems – and everyone is synchronised there by music.
(Taken from a post by Soramimi about the LP’s 6th track)
WRITING BY: CEDRIC FINKBEINER | 14 JUNE 2021
