The Human Birds of Aino Salto

“Imagine People as Adolescent Birds” – the title marks this album out as something quite special even before we press “start”. Aino Salto’s second album is available now via Irascible Records. Aino Salto is the solo project of composer and multi-instrumentalist Sonia Loenne.

“I was born in France in 1996 and was moved to Leipzig in 1997”, writes Loenne. “This has confused me linguistically. That’s why, in addition to music, I also work with poetry and theatre.” Arriving in Bern in 2020 to study contemporary composition, she swiftly connected with some of the more adventurous circles in Bern’s musical community and became the drummer in Edna as well as the keyboarder/vocalist in the excellently eccentric Bureau Bureau.

Drawing on the likes of Luzius Schuler, Paul Butscher, Tabea Kind and Eddy Sonnenschein for a wide selection of instruments ranging from flugelhorn and trumpet to laptop, cello and swirling piano arpeggios, Aino Salto presents Loenne as a chamber chanteuse with an intriguingly unusual line in humour, melody and rhythm: “I thought to myself: I feel so bad so often in view of the world, and so does everyone else – so what do we need now? Happy, songs, I thought, or at least energetic stuff without resignation, without ignoring the world, but also without hopeless crying.”

Aino Salto
Irascible
Sonia Loenne
Edna
Bureau Bureau
Luzius Schuler
Paul Butscher
Tabea Kind
Eddy Sonnenschein