Lara Somogyi’s memory machine

Lara Somogyi’s new album begins in Hawaii. That’s where her own story begins. Born on the lush, dramatic island of Kauaʻi, Somogyi uses words like beautiful, relaxed, and communal to describe her childhood. “Fingerprints”, the opening track, takes us back there: a field recording of conversing birds and a serene, approachable harp part evocative of you and your siblings playing by the water. There’s a blurriness to the music that makes the scene feel confined to a cartoon thought bubble, a half-remembered flashback. As it unfolds, the album gets more experimental and “in-the-lab,” but Somogyi assures me a [time] patterned isn’t a sonic autobiography. There isn’t a story arc. Each piece is rather a snapshot or “sonic room” for her to sit in. It just makes sense to start here. After Hawaii came New York. The city taught her that most things do not have one right answer. “There’s a pulse underlying that makes you feel like anything is possible,” she says. That included another jump across the water. Enrolling at the Royal Academy of Music in London, she experienced her most “transformative period,” her musical vocabulary growing exponentially. It was here that she started turning to e...