Sophia Blenda

Sophia Blenda represents a generation of women who feel at once brave and resigned, visible yet dismissed. There’s fear, but the desire to overcome it is stronger: »Offen bleibt, wer in die Zukunft greift« (»Whoever reaches into the future remains open«), she sings in the title track of her solo debut album »Die Neue Heiterkeit« (»The New Serenity«). Up till now, Sophia Blenda aka Sophie Löw was mainly known as the singer of the Viennese indie/post-punk band Culk. Now, the singer-songwriter creates haunting chamber pop with piano at the forefront, sometimes sombre and sometimes glamorously melodic. With a certain minimalism, her words are blown around by distant sounds, which in the next moment coalesce into a storm of electronically distorted, twitchy elements and cinematic strings. It all comes together to form a musical foundation for that ambivalent feeling between vulnerability and courage, dependency and self-empowerment.