Laetitia Sonami - Dangerous Women: Early Works 1985-2005 (2025)

Laetitia Sonami's Dangerous Women: Early Works 1985-2005 traces twenty years of fearless electronic innovation. From her studies with Eliane Radigue in France to mentorship under Robert Ashley and David Behrman at Mills College, this 2CD collection captures her evolution from analog experimentation to pioneering digital performance with her legendary "lady's glove" interface.

Lovely Music unveils a stunning 2CD retrospective that captures the fearless evolution of one of electronic music's most compelling pioneers. Following the tradition of visionary reissues that have illuminated forgotten corners of the avant-garde, Lovely Music presents Dangerous Women: Early Works 1985-2005, a revelatory collection that traces Laetitia Sonami's remarkable journey from the experimental underground of 1980s France to her emergence as one of America's most innovative electronic composers and performers. Born in France and initially mentored by drone music pioneer Eliane Radigue, Sonami embarked on a transatlantic journey that would fundamentally reshape her artistic vision. Her studies with Joel Chadabe at SUNY Albany and later at Mills College under the guidance of Robert Ashley and David Behrman provided the foundation for a practice that seamlessly weaves together composition, performance, and technological innovation. This comprehensive survey captures a crucial period of transformation - the twenty years during which Sonami evolved from mixing live cassettes with homemade analog synthesizers and found objects to pioneering work with MIDI, MAX software, and commercial sampling technology. Yet technology alone never defined her vision. As this collection demonstrates, Sonami's true genius lies in her ability to inhabit music both visually and dramatically, creating immersive sonic worlds that challenge conventional boundaries between composition and performance. Central to this evolution was Sonami's extraordinary collaboration with Melody Sumner Carnahan, whose dramatic texts provided the narrative framework for most of the works featured here. These pieces reveal how Sonami transforms literary material into compelling musical characters and behaviors, creating a unique fusion of storytelling and electronic experimentation that stands virtually alone in the contemporary landscape.

Perhaps most famously, this period witnessed the development of Sonami's legendary "lady's glove" - an arm-length tailored interface fitted with movement sensors that allows for fluid, gestural control of digital sound parameters, processing effects, motors, lights, and video playback. This invention, featured throughout the collection, represents more than mere technological innovation; it embodies Sonami's vision of electronic music as a fully embodied, theatrical experience. The works presented in Dangerous Women showcase an artist unafraid to push boundaries, whether technical, compositional, or performative. Each piece reveals Sonami's remarkable ability to make technology disappear, leaving only the raw immediacy of sound and gesture. Her presence on stage - compelling, fearless, utterly magnetic - transforms what could be clinical demonstrations of electronic manipulation into profoundly human encounters with the unknown. Since the period covered by this collection, Sonami has continued to pioneer new territories with her Spring Spyre instrument, which applies machine learning to real-time audio synthesis. Yet these early works remain essential listening - documents of an artist discovering her voice while simultaneously reinventing the very tools of electronic expression.

Dangerous Women: Early Works 1985-2005 stands as both historical document and living inspiration, proving that the most radical electronic music emerges not from technology alone, but from artists brave enough to make that technology sing with entirely human voices. This is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand how experimental music can be simultaneously cerebral and visceral, innovative and deeply moving.

Tracklist
1-1 Laetitia Sonami - Sombre Dimanche [4:43]
1-2 Laetitia Sonami - Why _Dreams Like A Loose Engine [11:01]
1-3 Laetitia Sonami - Mona Lisa [8:59]
1-4 Laetitia Sonami - Conversation With A Light Bulb [10:19]
1-5 Laetitia Sonami - Manananggal (Women Soignees) - My mouth embodies luxury [4:52]
1-6 Laetitia Sonami - Manananggal (Women Soignees) - There is no guarantee that goodness is possible [8:20]
1-7 Laetitia Sonami - Manananggal (Women Soignees) - Speak slowly, Dance with me [5:00]
1-8 Laetitia Sonami - Manananggal (Women Soignees) - All that follows is true, I swear [4:03]
2-9 Laetitia Sonami - Wilfred Wants You To Remember Us [17:42]
2-10 Laetitia Sonami - What Happened II [11:53]
2-11 Laetitia Sonami - A Historical Moment On A Line Between A And B [14:59]
2-12 Laetitia Sonami - She Came Back, Again [15:46]