Sophie Löw aka SOPHIA BLENDA is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and singer in the band CULK. On her first solo album, `Die Neue Heiterkeit' (2022), the Viennese artist took a stand against the paralysing background noise of social constraints with melancholic chamber pop set to piano and poetic lyrics.

SOPHIA BLENDA's music is a quiet but effective protest. `DIE SUMME DER VEREINZELUNG' is an indictment and a feminist wake-up call.

SOPHIA BLENDA's new album asks how many more individual cases must there be for them to realise that there are no individual cases.

The album title speaks volumes. Because what is the sum of the many individual stories but a violent system that ignores, discriminates against and belittles FLINTA* and queer people? Despite this, those affected are often not even believed or, if they are, no importance is attached to them.

`I want to counter this with my album,' says SOPHIA BLENDA. `I've been concerned for a long time that female and queer pain is trivialised in our society.

I want to tell these stories without trivialising anything. Nothing is dealt with here in passing or in passing.

The songs give the stories the importance they deserve.' Her struggle as a musician is a fight against the loss of her own stories, thoughts and feelings in the storm of the present.

And a counter-project to the isolation, loneliness and isolation that is already implied in the ambiguous title of the new album.

The socio-critical and ominously urgent compositions were written alone at the piano at home in Vienna.

From there, the intimately performed songs grow into something collective. In the spirit of: Together we are less alone.

`DIE SUMME DER VEREINZELUNG' is a strong pop statement. A fearless localisation of the soul.

Critical, searching, questioning. A memorial to one's own self. Or to paraphrase one of SOPHIA BLENDA's lyrics: `A spring awakening / My vigil / My own revolution / I'm not what you want me to be'Sophie Löw's perspectives, both musically and in terms of content, whether dark and gritty or tender and dark, whether performed with CULK or by SOPHIA BLENDA, are not easily accessible, but have an aching truthfulness that should resonate with us.