Berlin-based, Swiss singer, multi-instrumentalist and film composer Sophie Hunger releases her seventh studio album - her first in two years - Halluzinationen. The album - recorded at Abbey Road Studios in live continuous takes - is produced by MPG UK Producer Of The Year, Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey (Kate Tempest, Fontaines DC).
Halluzinationen arrives bearing an emphatic German title, as Hunger - still resident in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighbourhood - picks at the creative dependency between loneliness and the imagination. Electing this time around to decamp from Carey’s Speedy Wunderground studio in South London to the august surrounds of Abbey Road’s Studio 2, Halluzinationen is suffused with the nervous energy of its continuous live recording technique, with the album captured in sequence just six times over the course of two days. It’s an approach Hunger succinctly identifies as ‘Full risk’.
Sophie Hunger’s six solo albums to date have accrued over a quarter of a million sales, drawing her comparisons to contemporaries including Sharon Van Etten and PJ Harvey, with fans as wide-ranging as Lauren Laverne (who says of Sophie ‘I love this woman’), Steven Wilson (who tapped Hunger to guest on his UK Top 3 album To The Bone) and unlikely enough, footballing legend Eric Cantona (a long-standing fan of Sophie’s who guested to intone in French on Supermoon).