Last month, harpist and electronic craftsman Lara Somogyi delivered her introduction record !, a sonic investigation of the different ways the harp can be utilized to make thickly finished, sort challenging, and profoundly vivid soundscapes. Here, she talks pushing melodic limits, chance experiences with Brian Eno and working with everybody from Hans Zimmer to Anderson .Paak…
We may just be visiting over Zoom, however there is a practically tangible feeling of euphoria and excitement emanating through the screen when Lara Somogyi welcomes Main event from her L.A. studio. The gigantically gifted harpist has quite recently delivered her introduction collection ! (articulated interjection), an enchanting assortment of entrancing, delightfully finished soundscapes that place the harp up front while at the same time moving around its sonic furthest points as far as possible via an armful of guitar pedals and synthesizers. The outcome isn't such a lot of an affection letter to her instrument, yet a book written in its honor. Very nearly 10 years really taking shape, it addresses all that her vocation has been going to this point.
"I'm so glad to have this record out on the planet; it's been a genuine excursion of a great deal of investigation and love," a radiating Somogyi says as we join her. "It's been around 10 years as far as investigating a portion of the sonic instruments that I've been utilizing and the way in which I've been fostering my sound. I come from a truly customary traditional foundation, which lead me to the Regal Institute of Music in London, where I was acquainted with a wide range of roads that a harp could be put in. I was enamored with where you can take this instrument. The harp is a particularly tremendous, delectable show-stopper and there are so many ways you can utilize it and make various sounds. With the goal that investigation is where I began fostering my own sound and bringing it into an alternate domain."
Words like 'investigation' and 'improvement' are spoken significantly throughout our discussion, the feeling of interest and trial and error that fuelled not simply ! be that as it may, all that she has dealt with to date clearly undimmed in the wake of underscoring her most memorable full length record. As she makes sense of, the actual thought of making a collection has been a liquid one, with no portrayed start and end focuses.
"The record came from a veneration and obsession with making thing on the instrument that furnish me with a sensation of elation and opportunity," she says. "I was getting requested to play in various ways for various writers and tasks, and aside from that I'd investigate various sounds myself and sorting out what acquires me the most bliss how I approach the instrument. Thus, after sitting with myself and investing a ton of energy in the studio, I would have minutes where I felt 'this is a piece' and I'd begin creating it from that point. And afterward I would arrive where I believed I had a group of work that truly communicated what I appreciate most in the instrument."
The opportunity she depicts is surely one of the collection's characterizing attributes, its shapeshifting, type opposing characteristics remaining as demonstration of Somogyi's capacity to carry such an open way to deal with her specialty.
"I find extraordinary solace in sonic surfaces and causing the harp to feel air," she expounds. "It as of now has such a warm, and rich sound, yet joining it with things like gadgets and pedal impacts truly molded how I was playing it. I like investigating the harp through things like perpetual reverb pedals and error impacts - it was truly organized by a variety of guitar impacts pedals that I like to join in various arrangements. It's an unexpected without fail and it generally provokes my sonic curiosity to play with seems like that."
It's a genuine sonic assertion of how I feel about the excellence of the instrument.
So what were a portion of the significant impacts that aided shape the record?
"Numerous things," she says. "Such endless sonic inspirations, but I similarly take a lot of inspiration from different surfaces and shapes in nature. I come from such an old style foundation and a lot of my past work was truly established in film, so a great deal of my motivation comes from perceiving how feeling plays into recounting a story and how you can play something to an image or film and how that influences you. I love specialists like Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Jon Hopkins, Bonobo. There were many impacts. Also, I simply believe that inside this entire universe of sonic investigation the outside is reflected in my work of art, similar to the desert. I found a ton of motivation from the desert due to how sweeping it is. I consider it nature's cutting edge workmanship exhibition since there are such countless various sections and shapes that you don't find elsewhere. Does something like that influence the manner in which you feel?"
Given how much time she spent chipping away at the music that would ultimately frame !, Somogyi says she found it hard to decide when to quit messing with the material and define a boundary under it.
"There are so many various sounds you can make on the instrument, so I struggled with saying, 'this is all there is to it'," she reviews. "There were such countless things I was captivated in and needed to create, and you continue to inquire as to whether this could be a track or something that could advance onto the collection. What's more, there is a ton of music and thoughts that will come out in the end on future deliveries. It was testing settling this assemblage of work yet I'm truly content with it and how everything met up. It's a genuine sonic assertion of how I feel about the magnificence of the instrument."
The underpinnings of Somogyi's appreciation for the harp, yet for the exploratory way where she utilizes it, can be followed back to her investigations at London's Imperial Foundation of Music. It was here that she initially started to see direct the different manners by which the instrument could be used past the limits of her traditional establishing.
"It was testing and motivating," she states. "I was so lucky to be presented to such countless various harpists in the city that were playing various kinds of music. There was such a huge amount to ingest and vast chances to put your own stamp on how you needed to play the harp.
"What's more, it was truly supernatural since you would run into specialists you truly respected, and you'd play in various meetings. It was a truly developmental time as it woke me up to many universes that I wasn't presented to because of my traditional outlook. I ran into individuals like Brian Eno, and I'd been fixated on his Music For Air terminals. I had a few extraordinary cooperations with him that were so fascinating. Each time I ran into him I was so mindful, holding tight all his words. He would stroll in and have something he needed to imaginatively show whoever was in the room.
"On one occasion he got a rose and was like 'come round, come round'. What's more, he'd say 'come and take a gander at it outside, have you at any point seen this tone'? Unbeknownst to him it was truly powerful to me since it gave me an alternate method for interpretting being available and seeing things I wasn't molded to see in daily existence. On one occasion he got a scent and said, 'smell this, what does it resemble'? It was intriguing to encounter the tactile openness he would bring."
It was additionally in London that Somogyi would find her affection for working with craftsmen beyond the conventional domain.
"Things like working with Rufus Wainwright and Robbie Williams as a meeting player was perfect for taking a gander at the various methodologies you could take to playing the instrument and truly added to what I was doing. Then, at that point, coming to L.A, meeting various authors and specialists, would prompt various bits of work, and in the long run my record. My most memorable involvement in Hans Zimmer was Blue Planet II, where I had the option to come in and try different things with various impacts and perceive how that deciphered. I met Simon Green from Bonobo at a Ólafur Arnalds show. Anderson .Paak was simply through a companion who said he really wanted a harpist for his show. Then working with him carried different sonic components to the harp. It's in every case such a rush to gain from them as well and perceive how they make their craft. I feel extremely fortunate."
On the off chance that the apparent energy Somogyi feels at delivering her most memorable collection is anything to go by, it appears to be improbable we'll be standing by so lengthy for collection number two.
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