Laetitia Sonami synthesizes advanced technology, original music and narrative into an intimate, spontaneous art form all her own. She is best known for her unique instrument, the elbow-length "lady's glove" that she plays live onstage, and which is fitted with pressure and motion sensors to control electronic sounds. In January of 1997 the New York Times described Sonami as "a human antenna searching the air for sounds, like a dancer focused on her hands, or like a deity summoning earthshaking rumbles with a brusque gesture". With "She Came Back, Again" Sonami writes that she "rediscovers the pleasure of the fluidity of sound offered by FM synthesis. The lady's glove controls parameters of the synthesis and flirts with the destabilization of these sounds, constructing and deconstructing layers, forming recollections of abstract habitual patterns...The inspiration for the text came from the earlier version of the music which had no narrative. It gives some obscure and confusing description of a mechanical being, probably the one performing, the same way a narrator's voice in some animal or war documentary describes the scene being shown, trying to create meaning when meaning is not asked for." The text is by Melody Sumner Carnahan, excerpted from "One More Thing, and read by Sonami. Aside from the narrator's voice, there is no prerecorded music. |
