Track By Track: Sopraterra – Seven Dances To Embrace The Hollow
Zurich-based experimental duo Sopraterra – aka Polish composer Magda Drozd & Italian artist Nicola Genovese – present a guide to their extraordinary debut album of uncanny post-medieval electronic music; like a lysergic Wolf Hall scored by Shackleton.
Sopraterra (meaning ‘above the earth’ in Italian) are a Zurich-based experimental duo made up of Polish composer Magda Drozd & Italian artist Nicola Genovese, formed in 2023. With spiralling tonalities drawn from Drozd’s violin and Genovese’s alto saxophone, the duo explore ancient, baroque and medieval resonances, assimilating their airs and echoes within vast soundscapes of drone and ambient.
Enhanced by electro-acoustic composition, analog synthesizers and instrumentation including the one string bass, bodhrán (an Irish frame drum), sansula (a kalimba on a drum head), and several recorders, Sopraterra’s music is a unique, era-spanning assemblage.
On their debut album ‘Seven Dances To Embrace The Hollow’, Sopraterra’s music is dramatic, uncanny, often breathtaking, at times evoking a Smithsonian Folkways recording of traditional flute music blasted with the Sturm und Drang noise of Einstürzende Neubauten (‘The Second Before Slipping’), at others a military march theme conducted by Colin Stetson (‘Unglued’), and in other instances; a Dario Argento soundtrack reimagined by Coil (‘The Primal Regret’).
Developed at La Becque – an artist residency facility in La Tour-de-Peilz, Western Switzerland with previous residents including Maria W Horn and Time Is Away – and later recorded at Relief Studios in Fribourg, ‘Seven Dances To Embrace The Hollow’ is a foreboding yet alluring soundworld. Altogether, the album conjures some historic, courtly spectacle, as seen through a psychedelic lens; a lysergic Wolf Hall scored by Shackleton, or Akira Kurosawa’s Ran if soundtracked by Księżyc.
Despite all the comparisons, this is music with its own stature, a singular, surreal epic steeped in ancient mystique and modern innovation. Visualized by Genovese’s supremely trippy, carnivalesque artwork, ‘Seven Dances To Embrace The Hollow’ is an enigmatic and transportive album that exists and thrives across multiple timelines.
We duly asked Sopraterra to provide a track by track guide to the album, and Genovese delivered a fascinating insight into it all, revealing connections and inspirations encompassing Current 93, meditation, Japanese Gagaku music, the 14th century composer Francesco Landini, medieval chants, Renaissance music and beyond. Read on and have a listen below.
1. The Second Before Slipping
This track is inspired by Gagaku, a traditional form of Japanese classical music. Specifically, the intro is inspired by Komabue flute melodies (a type of Japanese bamboo flute). As with the whole album, we used granular loops to fragment the melody and transform it into a drone.
It has an autumn vibe: ‘The Second Before Slipping’ is almost like the second before a leaf falls. The colour we chose is the glossy brown of a fake leather slipper.
2. Unglued
This track is inspired by the saltarello, an Italian medieval folk dance traditionally played with a recorder and a frame drum. The idea was to recreate the festive vibe of this dance with a touch of something epic; a dance melody that slowly becomes the prelude to the entry of a cavalry regiment.
This is definitely a spring song that echoes Francesco Landini’s 14th century composition ‘Ecco la primavera’ (‘Here is the Spring’). The colour is the pale green on the back of a leaf, heralding a fertile spring blossom.
3. Chest Mesh
This track is pure winter — but not a Heidiland (Eastern Switzerland) winter. The colour is snow mixed with mud: dirty white, from a place where you hate the snow.
The starting point was the rhythmic part: a recording of a mechanical metal press. The track developed around it. The chaotic, screeching violin was inspired by Current 93’s intense, magisterial invocations.
4. The Primal Regret
We wanted to make a song for meditation — one for sleeping and dancing at the same time. The vibe, like on the album’s other songs, is interseasonal: melancholic, dreamy, eerie, and hopeful. But to avoid a happy ending, we sampled the sound of angry dogs barking at you from behind fences.
The season is a full moon on a foggy autumn night. The colour is the shade of grey you find on a granite stone.
5. Horizontal Gathering
Once again, we were inspired by medieval chants, modal scales, and especially chamber music arrangements. We introduced the bow on the single-string bass to trigger a closer dialogue with the violin.
I think this is a spring song, though rather shy — when the cold is still in your bones, and you stubbornly wear a cotton jacket. The colour is that of dry wood, on the verge of awakening.
6. Eternal Decay
This is one of our first compositions. The starting point is a slowed-down fragment of a Renaissance scale, looped, which turns into a fiery, seething effluence.
The colour is that of terracotta pavement — aged, but washed for decades to keep it clean. It doesn’t have a season, but rather a feeling: the moment you step onto a carpet with sandy shoes.
7. An Elegy for the Phoenix
This track has a similarly epic vibe to ‘Unglued’, but the rhythmic pattern is heavier — it feels more like a prelude to battle. A ritual around a bonfire, where you can see fire sparks from the next village.
The ideas for this song emerged during our studio recording sessions. This is the last song, and we realized that we don’t have a summer song — and we can live with that. The colour is metallic red.
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