Hiraeth by Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka

"Drifts even deeper into the bewitching universe they conjured on their last album... 'Hiraeth' is a testament that there are realms beyond our ordinary perception; sometimes you just have to leave something behind to find them."
Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork. 7.9/10

"The birds, the light, and even the wind against the harps became collaborators in their music, which feels meditative and healing – a true sound sanctuary born from deep listening and presence."
Jakub Knera, The Quietus

"... a mildly psychedelic work that often feels fantastical but also firmly rooted, designed to delight with warm, inviting sounds and an earthy atmosphere."
Mariana Timony, Bandcamp Essential Releases

"Recorded directly to tape in the Polish countryside, Sofie Birch and Antonina Nowacka's second album is a bucolic, atavistic daydream, sketched out with just a guitar, zither and voices and then beefed up with field recordings and prudent synth and keyboard parts in the studio. Utterly charming stuff..."
Boomkat

There’s no direct English translation for the word “hiraeth”. In the Welsh language, it describes a form of longing for an intangible something, somewhere or someone that no longer exists. Sofie Birch and Antonina Nowacka draw on the concept to guide their second collaborative album, a suite of vulnerable, open-hearted improvisations and reflections that attempt to grasp an image of the past that’s chimeric, dissolving almost as soon as it materializes. The duo’s process follows the same distant beacon; unlike Languoria, their critically acclaimed debut, Hiraeth is, at heart, an acoustic record, informed by in-person improvisations with voices and string instruments that gesture to an era before computers, AI and DAWs. It’s just as lush, but Hiraeth is warmer and more muted than its predecessor.

Nowacka and Birch conceived the album in the wake of a slew of collaborative live concerts, spurred on by serendipitous improvisations and an interest in paring down their setup. Unsound arranged a retreat in Sokołowsko, an idyllic village nestled in the verdant hills of Southern Poland, close to the Czech border. Sokołowsko surrounds a large ruined sanatorium that’s rumored to have inspired Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, and has long been a magnet for artists. The two took the opportunity to rethink their approach completely, arriving with just a guitar, a zither and a portable Nagra reel-to-reel machine. Recording directly to tape, they sketched out ideas with just their voices and instruments, reflecting their surroundings without being distracted or mediated by modern technology.

“We wanted to get away from screens as much as possible,” says Birch, “to bring to the world something vulnerable and honest. Without advance preparation, every day we went out into the open air, finding places to sit, during sunset or the midday sun. We discovered new tunings on our instruments, picked up a melody, and started the machine, playing over and over till we got a take.” In the autumn, they met again in a Copenhagen studio, sparingly and carefully layering old synths and organs to add more depth without muddying the mix.

Both Nowacka and Birch sing throughout, their voices threading the acoustic instruments and tangling with each other, almost becoming one. But it’s the environment of Sokołowsko, “the birds and the light, even the wind playing against the harps,” that’s woven into the music’s lining. Affected by time spent meditating and in nature, as well as the fact that Birch was pregnant whilst recording, the album feels alive and remarkably present. Even the sound quality of the tape machine gives Hiraeth a tactile, organic quality, as Nowacka puts it, “like being in a warm bath.”

They still have the raw recordings from Sokołowsko on old reels, physical souvenirs of their time spent making music in a “habitat for intuitive songs, a little ecosystem, alive and spirited.” The outmoded gear and remote setting helped the duo disengage from the modern world for a few moments and imagine an existence that’s been lost to time and nominal progress. With digital technology receding into the background, Nowacka and Birch had space to make “intuitive connections with frequencies and people,” as Birch explains. Hiraeth is a testament not to nostalgia, but to the power of kinship.