I enjoy a good skeletal and surprising sounding album, like Tirzah’s Trip9love, which is one reason I’ve been digging into Danish composer Astrid Sonne’s Great Doubt.
Sonne has a history of releasing largely instrumental music, this is her 3rd album, to which she’s added singing (hers), viola (hers also), detuned piano, synths, fractured beats, sampled woodwinds, cello, guitar, and saxophone for Great Doubt‘s skeletal and surprising sound with guests Ben Vince, Levitation Orchestra’s Emma Barnaby, Jasper Marsalis, and Alvilda Reiter Jakobsen.
Perhaps this is a perfect record for people who don’t really enjoy your basic singer/songwriter fare even though Sonne sings (and speaks) songs with words she’s written but they’re wrapped in sounds—electric and acoustic—not chords lending Great Doubt a lovely but not too lovely composed flair.