Laura Misch on how she redefined her craft & developed her obsession with 'clouds of sound' for her latest album.

Words by Joe Williams

In her latest album, 'Sample The Sky', the London-based composer continues to explore sound and collaborate with creative communities.

Off the back of her last release, 2019’s Lonely City, saxophonist, composer and general auditory explorer Laura Misch has been directing her eyes and her ears upwards. At the turn of the 2020s, Misch's work with filmmaker Greg Barnes saw her immersed in pockets of nature, using her sax and a portable rig consisting of belt-mounted preamps and pedals to interact with the elements around her. This was partly in response to the digitised, synthesised experience of recording Lonely City, but also — perhaps more importantly — another step in the sonic voyage that Misch has been on since her first EP was released. As an act of pure experimentation, the music wasn’t released formally. 

Yet, for Misch, this work with Barnes “unlocked this whole new way of being in the natural world and finding the sound,” ultimately inspiring her to “incorporate that directly through sampling or through just listening for texture, tone and genre.” Three years later, Misch has honed this ability to ‘find the sound’ further — and she’s applied it to the sky. The space above all of us is her frontier and she’s consolidated her curiosity about its aural potential with a palpable, tangible release: Sample The Sky.

This record is more than just the representation of Misch’s own recent compositions. It’s also a testament to her growing excitement for, and commitment to, collaboration. It features a diverse array of South London’s finest, a medley of musicians and field recorders as well as physical, and visual artists. An accompanying show has been developed; a six-week tour that’s completely dependent on the synthesis between Misch, harpist Marysia Osu and guitarist Tomáš Kašpar — one that places emphasis on “feeling in music.” Even before the album and the show, she was immersing herself in group compositional endeavours. Misch recently joined NYX, a self-described ‘drone choir’ that brings together electronics and experimental vocal techniques into a live space, where she has been both contributing to and learning from.

Her most recent single, riffing on the LP title, is called Listen to the Sky. But why the sky? And why should we listen to it? Misch thinks it’s because we have a lot to learn from it. We just need to look up and listen. “It’s this idea of the sky being able to tell us things that we wouldn't know otherwise.” As if in an attempt to inhabit it, she’s actually speaking to me from “the top of a hill in Crystal Palace.” The background behind her is an image of a gleaming sun and azure skies reflected in a coiled spiral of water in the earth — I realise later that this is the artwork for the Listen to the Sky single, but the notion of an artist practising what she preaches remains. It’s always interesting when philosophy and creativity converge for an artist, and, as Misch has demonstrated with her brilliant recent releases, it’s where things start to get really exciting.

Is there a meaning behind the name of your new album?

It's called Sample the Sky. It’s in reference to sampling culture, musically, but also in reference to a scientific study of something to look deeper. We need to sample and make a frame or capture a specimen in order to look deeply — or to hear deeply. I see music making as a laboratory, as a research process in its own right.

What’s your journey as an artist been like up to this point?

I think it's ever-evolving, and I struggle to define it. I started off playing saxophone, with a desire to write songs and sing. But obviously, when you sing and you play the saxophone, you can't do both at the same time — unless you're going into that Colin Stetson style, through manipulation, which is incredible as well. But then I was interested in, ‘what if you introduce a second sound, like a guitar’, or something that people are familiar with. And then I became interested in using loop pedals, or some other form of creating texture with a saxophone that I could sing over — I got into producing through that door.

How did that lead to Sample the Sky?

I made a project back in 2019 called Lonely City, and… I think the songs are just very personal. They're very much inspired by South London in lots of ways and the communities that have been involved with different jobs that have been doing it over the years. I became quite obsessed with people who are really honing in on their niche — whether it's modular, or whether it's with a saxophone. This record that I've made now is very much a fusion of that journey of the last three years.

Out of all your music, ‘Hide to Seek’ and ‘Listen to the Sky’ have a particular vibrancy and sense of kinetic energy to them. What was the intention behind that?

We're so inclined and attracted to rhythm. I wanted people to feel a sense of movement and surrender — it's quite sensual. And that way, both lyrically and with the saxophone, it’s meant to be leading you into the kind of breathiness of it. So the modular hook is actually saxophones through a modular synthesiser. I always wanted to make a saxophone dance track, and that's kind of what that is. Interestingly, Hide to Seek does actually still use field recordings of geophones — internal tree recordings.

What’s the ethos behind Sample the Sky?

The sky is the biggest canvas of really real wilderness. When you think about it in terms of space. It's very rare that you see that much space ‘downward’, so it's very inspiring. I think sonically, the sky is also extremely variant. I've become interested in people like Pauline Oliveros who did all this theory on deep listening as a form of meditation and awareness, in the 1960s. There are lots of people whose work draws upon a way of existing in and listening to the environment. My evolution as an artist is about following music and composition that aligns with a practice of how I want to interact and engage with the world.

And that evolution has culminated in your new album?

Definitely. I think it's part of any process where you're kind of moving on and starting to recreate or redefine how you make work. I've become really interested in different people's ideas and processes, and ways of listening to be inspired, because I don't think I'm personally someone who can sit in isolation and conjure something when I need to; I need to be out, interacting with the world. Oliveros produced these phrases, they’re called Sonic Meditations. I love this one called ‘Native’: “Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”

What is it about these types of thinking that resonate with you?

It's like poetry, these ways of being out in the world that I find really interesting. To explore it through new eyes or ears, getting back into your senses — because I think we can become so desensitised through technology. The laptop; I think to myself, ‘Ah, you're on a flat screen, and I can't smell anything’ — but then again, I'm a huge fan of microphones and sensors, etc. Technology is obviously important, I just think we must embrace it in other ways.

How does this relate to performing — do you feel differently about that to writing or recording?

They are very, very different sides of your brain. But there are some crossovers. Can both be highly meditative experiences? My early shows were very technical; they had a lot of pre-programmed looping. Whereas I feel now the show is more about holding the space. I really think this show is very ethereal. There's also a lot of sound design. I'm really hoping that we create quite a nurturing space one that's also giving people a journey that encompasses times when you can dance and move — but there are also times when I joke that it’s like an adult lullaby. Because I was saying to people, earlier this year, “This is the part where you can lay down.”

You’ve become a lot more collaborative since you started out.

I was doing a one-woman show for years and now I'm playing with the band [Marysia and Tomáš] that's been really, really amazing. Having these extra elements — I’m just obsessed with this idea of clouds of sound. I'm really excited about collaborating more in the next year. There are so many people who I admire and who I sort of know but haven't had a chance to really make music with. It's not about me, it's about the collective energy that's generated by everyone.

What’s next?

I think going out into environments and immersing myself and then composing from what's found and recorded in the space. I'm really back on that idea now because Sample the Sky — very much a studio album — is done now.Working again on my wearable rig is also something that I've been wanting to come back to, post the album because the kind of world-building around it has been all-encompassing. There are people like Imogen Heap, with the MiMu gloves — there are lots of people doing interesting things with electronics that are intuitive and not studio-bound. But custom-built preamps are very temporary, and very temperamental so there's always more soldering work to be done. They're not robust pieces of equipment, they are quite delicate. 

Sample the Sky will be released via One Little Independent Records on October 13th. It can be preordered here.