«When you create music, it acts as a mirror of where you are in that present instant». Sofie Birch invites us to reconsider music as a cognitive tool through her latest release
An introduction to Holotropica
The sound artist and producer from Copenhagen Sofie Birch, guest at Terraforma Festival this year along with other artists such as Donato Dozzy, Paquita Gordon, Dj Red and Mark Ernestus Ndagga Rhythm Forces, has recently published a new music project.
Holotropica is the title of her last album that with its sounds and chords leads us to observe curiously the most mysterious and disturbing parts of our ego, through a crescendo that then ends in the symphonic balance of acceptance.
With its gentle, biospheric and extended sounds, Holotropica has much to do with the mystery of new life. At least, this is what emerges if one traces the entire process of conception, development and production of the entire album.
Starting in 2018 when a friend of hers got pregnant, Sofie started to feel special emotions that required a 14-day isolation period for her to be deeply and fully known and reprocessed. The album took form in 2020 once she shared the music with Christian Rohde who was launching the Danish label interCourse, and they decided to publish the album together. Once it was completed, Sofie Birch got pregnant.
«I was in my late twenties and began to wonder if I would ever bring forth a new life and when. This project was a kind of way to process these emotions and questions. I decided to spend 14 days in a forest house on my own during the winter. It was very new to me to be so alone. Generally, I am a very social person, always surrounded by people. This decision to be alone was very radical for me. There, I started to practice mediation and then translated this practice into new sounds for the first pieces of the album».
Holotropica: between climax and stillness
Terraforma Festival this year themed around synthesis as the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole. Coincidentally, the same theme of essential entirety runs through the entire Holotropica project, which the artist defines as her «vision of a place of wholeness, serenity and clarity».
Strongly linked to a meditative process, the album is made up of various climaxes, that progressive crescendos which can be found in several tracks such as Humidity, Tide Rose and The Sun XIX, where the different sounds overlapping in an increasing rhythm lead to a final point of stillness and inner lightness.
«Meditation is like meeting some kind of wholeness. In our daily lives our energy is often spread out in a lot of different directions and you can become really stressed. So, meditation is essential because it is a way of returning to your body and your mind and aligning yourself to your own center. Working on Holotropica was an experience of traveling in search of all the parts of myself that from scattered finally came together into one present being».
From extemporaneous to elaborate creation
When approaching a new role joining the definition of ourselves, it is usual to have an already preconceived idea of what norms and expectations will converge on us. The risk very often is to fall into the phenomenon of typecasting, which inevitably leads to a failure to take into account the uniqueness of the individual, which can consequently lead to setting limits on action.
Sofie Birch confesses that for a long time in her head she had a preconceived idea of what a musician was and what he or she should do. This idea was a limitation she later overcame by throwing herself with open arms into experimenting with a freedom she initially thought she could not make use of.
This freedom translates into the use of improvisation when it comes to producing music. It is an approach that recurs in Holotropica as well, side by side, however, this time with a more structured, composed, programmed creative process.
«For a long time I had a preconceived idea in my mind of what a musician should be or do and I felt I couldn’t stand all this. When I started experimenting with music I wanted to break its rules, to feel total freedom. After a while, I moved back to a more structured way of producing music, but with a constant desire to perceive and communicate that sense of openness, curiosity, and freedom proper to improvisation. Holotropica is actually a project that plays on the alternation of these two different creative approaches».
A new experience of music
From the very first day Sofie Birch plunged into this project alone. However, during this new journey she felt the necessity to open it up to the participation of other artists such as Nana Pi, A. Fabrin, Dolphin Midwives, _iC_iC whose musical contribution seems to have managed in all cases to fit delicately into the flow of the different melodies.
«Slowly it became more and more apparent to me that I needed to look outside of myself as well and not just within myself, to ask for help from other musicians. I think it was a natural process that began to make me think of music as something that I don’t own, something that can be shared with other people in the course of its development».
Through Holotropica, music is transformed from a simple concatenation of sounds to an expanding experience, both in terms of production and perception. It becomes simultaneously an ‘output’ of thought and a healing ‘input’ as the artist becomes both an active and passive subject during the composition itself.
The relevance of space in Sofie Birch’s music
Listening to the constant transformation of the chord progression, it is easy to imagine oneself immersed in a vast and fluid space, where anything is observed with eyes half-closed through a double filter of light and water that makes it indistinguishable in its shimmering form.
After painting and describing this image that came to mind in the course of the interview, Sofie Birch smiled, recalling how one of her collaborators and friend, Christian Rohde, had previously associated such a thought with her musical production.
Holotropica is strongly connected to a mental place where the self is finally able to find solace and which Sofie Birch thinks of «as a garden illuminated by glows filled with energy, a place where one can feel both free and safe».
Sofie Birch is quick to remind us that nature in all its forms and manifestations-aside from being a great source of inspiration and care-is also the place to which we are inexplicably destined to return sooner or later. So it was at the beginning of this project and so it is whenever she feels the need to go in search of new sounds.
«I spent half of my childhood on a small Danish island, a very small community of 600 people.
Over time this has become a place of reference to which I often return, driven by my memories of experiences related to an unspoiled setting in which I continue to feel safe and from where I began to translate that inclination towards the natural world into musical sounds. First and foremost, the highs and lows of the waves».
Sofie Birch
Sofie Birch is a sound artist and producer from Copenhagen known for her extensive work with soft ambient releases, live shows, animation films and art installations. With electronic hardware and field recordings, she creates melodic compositions that are produced with a sense of brightness and spirit encouraging its listeners to dream and dwell. She has a profound interest in the healing nature of sound and vibrations and works across disciplines with other artists on expanding our understanding of mind and body through art.
