Aino Salto gorgeously exploring fantasies of endings and renewals
Entitled “Feeding the Fantasy”, the multi-facetted composer/singer/drummer Aino Salto aka Sonia Loenne releases her second EP in the space of two months, thus creating a kind of double-sided-Mini-LP. “Feeding the Fantasy” is available now via Irascible. These are the members of the band: Sonia Loenne (vocals), Luzius Schuler (keys), Paul Butscher (flugelhorn), Tabea Kind (double bass), Eddy Sonnenschein (drums).
“Ideally, people should get a feeling that anything was possible and life was wonderfully beautiful from listening to this music”, says Loenne about “Feeding the Fantasy”. Which does seem a bit odd, given that the first song, “The Banker”, is told from the perspective of a dead man, whilst “Weird Spider” is about a personal crisis being witnessed by a loved one who has passed away, and “Poppies Forever” extols the joys of struggling to pay the bills. Not exactly uplifting fare, you’d think. However, Aino Salto’s joyous music is all about duality – about drawing inspiration from everyday sorrows, troubles and tragedies to bring forth a better world.
Born in Nice, France, in 1996 but raised mostly in Leipzig, Germany, Sonia Loenne moved to Berne for her studies at the beginning of the present decade and lost no time to connect with the more experimentally-minded pillars of the local music scene. “My artistic thinking oscillates back and forth between pop music and experimental new music”, she says. “I’m also interested in climate justice and politics, which doesn’t always express itself musically. But the basis and common ground of all my work is following current events and placing myself as an artist in society.”
