Few artists have reshaped the possibilities of electronic music as profoundly as Laetitia Sonami. Her newly released retrospective, Dangerous Women: Early Works 1985–2005, is more than a 2CD collection—it’s a chronicle of fearless innovation, tracing twenty years of experiments that bridged the gap between analog improvisation and cutting-edge digital performance.
Born in France in 1957, Sonami began her journey under the tutelage of drone pioneer Éliane Radigue, absorbing a deep understanding of sound as a living, breathing presence. Her move to California in 1978 marked a turning point. At Mills College, she studied under Robert Ashley and David Behrman, two towering figures of American experimental music, who nurtured her explorations into live electronics and multimedia performance. But even in these formative years, Sonami’s vision was never just about technology. Her genius lay in making machines speak with a distinctly human voice, transforming wires and sensors into extensions of emotion and narrative.
Dangerous Women captures this evolution in stunning detail. The early pieces hum with raw electricity: homemade analog synthesizers, live cassette mixing, and found objects woven into unpredictable sonic landscapes. As the collection progresses, we hear Sonami embracing MIDI, sampling technology, and MAX software, crafting compositions that feel both meticulously designed and deeply alive. Central to many of these works is her collaboration with writer Melody Sumner Carnahan, whose dramatic texts became the skeleton upon which Sonami built vivid musical characters. Together, they forged a rare fusion of storytelling and electronic experimentation.
At the heart of this period lies one of the most iconic inventions in electronic music history: the “lady’s glove.” This arm-length, sensor-fitted interface allowed Sonami to control sound, lights, motors, and video with the subtlest of gestures, turning performance into a fully embodied act. The glove was more than a tool; it was a manifesto, blurring the lines between composer, performer, and instrument. Pieces like the haunting Manananggal – Women Soignées and the epic Wilfred Wants You to Remember Us showcase the glove’s power to translate movement into sound, turning every flick of the wrist into a stroke of sonic color.
What makes Dangerous Women so compelling is not just the technical innovation but the emotional weight behind it. Sonami’s work has always carried a dramatic tension, balancing cerebral precision with visceral impact. Tracks like Sombre Dimanche or Why Dreams Like A Loose Engine show her ability to make experimental electronics feel intimate, even vulnerable. Listening to this collection is less like hearing a record and more like stepping inside a living performance, where sound, gesture, and story collide.
Since retiring the lady’s glove in 2016, Sonami has continued to push boundaries, creating the Spring Spyre instrument, which uses machine learning to sculpt sound in real time. Yet these early works remain a vital foundation—not just for her career, but for anyone seeking to understand how experimental music can be both groundbreaking and deeply human. Dangerous Women is a rare achievement: a historical document that still feels urgent, alive, and ahead of its time. It’s a reminder that true innovation in music doesn’t come from technology alone, but from artists bold enough to make that technology sing.
