Albertine Sarges

On new EP Family Of Things, Albertine Sarges - the Berlin-based multi-hyphenate creative talent - plumbs new depths of unadorned and often self-confessional emotion. Don’t assume that these are necessarily gloomy or unpleasant responses, rather we are presented with realistic feelings and ideas that are rarely put into words and music.

Such is the emotional immediacy on show that Sarges seems to reach across the divide between musician and listener, either through a confessional lyric like “I wear clothes like a granny”, or the interaction with collaborators who play key roles on the album such as singer Anna B Savage, poet Amanda Monti, and flautist Lisa Baeyens. ‘Hold On’, though ostensibly about nicotine addiction, could be applied to any type of crutch - drugs, booze, sex, work, relationships, expensive pastries. Likewise, on ‘Birds Life’ she sings “I always do the same things wrong”. These oh-so-relatable concerns are why the EP seems to stretch its arms outwards, reaching for understanding. Perhaps the best example of this is the lyric “the best slurp is love”: neither we or Sarges may be able to give a 100% accurate description of what it means (she says “I don’t know if that is even proper English”), but we have a hazy understanding, a sense, a vibe of this charmingly messy little phrase. Such is Sarges’ talent that we’re taken along with the general thrust of this notion, and indeed the EP itself. To use a modern phrase, we feel seen.

This is the first track taken from the EP and the EP’s closer ‘Deep Well’ featuring Kat Frankie. It’s fitting that this coda is so much more alien sounding than anything else on the EP, lacking the dry, funky sound of the previous songs, and instead plumping for a cosmic sonic palette of flute, cavernous reverbs, and tremulous synthesisers. We might situate this song between Vanishing Twin, Air, and Harumi Hosono, artists that are able to seamlessly fashion a sense of pure calm alongside pure otherworldliness. Rather like ‘The End’ on The Doors’ first album, ‘Deep Well’ reconfigures and redefines everything that’s come before. Such is the strange, experimental, somehow jellied sweep contained in much of this song that when Sarges’ vocals come back in (some four and a half minutes later) you greet them like an old friend. About the track, Sarges explains; “This is the slowest and also the longest song I ever put out. I guess the message is: radical deceleration and contemplation. The lyrics are about meditation. The zen concept of emptiness refers to how we perceive things around us: The goal is to have a clear view: Nothing added, nothing taken away from the raw data of physical events around you. But emptiness is like a snake, you have to make sure to pick it up from the right side, or else it might bite you = You might lose yourself in ignorance and inner stiffness.”