Isn’t the world gorgeous through Sofie Birch-tinted glasses? Listening to “Sefirot Surfa,” a gentle, whimsical romp from Bivabippabualukka, has made the harsh and poorly maintained streets around my East London flat feel magical and new: What portals, it begs a listener to ask, could lie between those cracks in the pavement, or beneath that pile of refuse?
Lush and animated, Bivabippabualukka is an extraordinary break from convention in comparison to Birch’s previous releases, a series of ambient folk records that encouraged scholarly engagement with the minutiae of Birch’s compositional choices. 2025’s soundbath-like Hiraeth, for example, was hardly casual listening, a listening experience that would likely be impeded…
Tag Archive: Sofie Birch
The collaboration between Sofie Birch and Antonina Nowacka began through the Unsound Festival in 2021 when they first met during the Morning Glory concert series at the Kraków Synagogue at noon. This initial encounter quickly blossomed into the creation of Languoria, an album recorded in Copenhagen and released the following year. In 2024, the duo journeyed to Sokołowsko, a small town in Lower Silesia known for its unique microclimate and historic sanatorium founded in the 19th century. There, Birch and Nowacka deliberately disconnected from modern technology and compositional plans, venturing into the surrounding nature armed only with a guitar, a zither, and a portable Nagra reel-to-reel tape recorder.