Louder Than a Whisper: Sophia Reveals the Undertow of her Life Thus Far

With her first album Undertow, out today, London-based composer/singer-songwriter Sophia Hansen-Knarhoi reveals stark vulnerability nestled in a dark ambience that is both intimate and expansive. Voice and cello provide the bedrock of a detail focused record, that threads together memory, grief, growth and connection.

Undertow took its shape during an acclimation of sensuality and self, through a period of processing trauma, and all of life, love and loss that it surrounds and intertwines with. ‘Undertow’ binds this intimacy with the corporeal, spanning violation and deep trust. It deals with the fallout of the victims of violence against women, voyaging through fear and pain to absolution.

Sophia explains “This track captures a moment of rage, a realisation of being treated in a way that only served the other person, without regard for mutual connection, and a recognition of this as a pattern from the past. It poses a sense of freedom through this recognition of negligence.”

I sat down with Sophia and we discussed everything from the subject matter of the album, to what its original title was, on through to how some of the songs came to be, and, oh yeah, even her thoughts on penguins vs. sloths!

Being that this is your debut album, before we explore it can you please explain how long it took beforehand to bring everything together for it? - “This album has been 3 years in the making, I started working on it during my final year at university. ‘Afraid’ was the first track I wrote, whilst at a residency in Dunsborough, Western Australia, with my close friend and bandmate Liam Downey. This trip was the first glimpse of an album emerging. I also wrote ‘Dust’ on this trip. Liam and I recorded much of the cello on the album in mid 2024, later that year I went to New York to work with Randall Dunn to produce the album.”

What were some of the biggest obstacles along the way to bringing this album to fruition and how did you overcome them? - “I find that vocals are often the trickiest to get right, especially in such a vulnerable piece of work. A raw vocal delivery sits at the heart of the music that I create. When the subject matter is painful at times, it can be difficult to find that space without masking parts of that tension. I think this balance was the key obstacle Randall and I encountered in the studio. When we eventually found the emotional core of the songs, it really fell into place.”

As for the album, Undertow, I understand that it is a set of songs that deal with the fallout of the victims of violence against women. Understandably a most admirable, yet sensitive subject matter, in general, what made you want to musically absorb such a topic? - “I think the output of dealing with such a topic is bringing it to light, in hopes that anyone listening who has this lived experience might feel less alone.”

Indeed, a lot of words have already been used to describe your music, such as raw, emotive, dark, stoic, intimate, expansive, et al, but how would you yourself sum up your sound on this album ... and in just five (5) words? - “Vulnerable, dark, dissociative, visceral, embodied.”

Please tell us a little more about what these tracks noted below mean to you and how they came to be: - All The Things That Aren’t You - “This track captures a moment of rage, a realisation of being treated in a way that only served the other person, without regard for mutual connection, and a recognition of this as a pattern from the past. It poses a sense of freedom through this recognition of negligence.”

“Set to the backdrop of a field recording of a torrential storm, the cellos interchange in glissandos. There is a lot of space for the world of the field recording, with the distant ‘oos’ give an impression a feeling from the past, a meandering thought before a moment of clarity. The field recording its self was taken the night of a huge storm. As I recorded from my windowsill, as tree in the bushland across from me was struck by lightning, and burst into flames.”

“The scathing lyrics come in with force and a grittiness, accentuating their dramatics, feeding the rageful delivery. The vocal melody glides with the cello glissandi, we hear whispered trails of the lyrics, and bold echoed backing vocals. The double bass feels as if its closer to moving in the world of the rumbling thunder.”

Undertow - “The title track of the album, wordless, is quite still. At its centre is a field recording I took in a sea cave near Boscastle. During the field recording, I improvised a vocal piece as I walked around the cave. You can hear the waves crashing at a distance, the dripping walls. I’ve always been drawn to and fearful of caves, there are a number of them in and around Western Australia so I spent a lot of my childhood exploring them. They have always evoked quite contrasting feelings for me, tranquility and apprehension, they feel eerily comforting to me. The way that voices sound in a cave fills me with melancholy.”

“As I improvised this piece, I was curious as to how my voice in this space made me feel. There’s a contemplative intention there, but a through line to quite playful moments at the end. There are layered vocal harmonies that belong to an adjacent world that creep in. Then there are the cello textures, emulating wood creaking as a boat sways on the swell, wind through a mast, we are closer than feels natural to this boat. We hear it in a different space from the one we are in but it feels close.”

“My dad is a sailor, I spent a lot of time on boats growing up. I used to get scared when there was big swell, so my brother told me to hum with the sound of the motor to calm me down. I always liked boat sounds, they gave me comfort in aspirationally not sinking.”

Brave - “Brave is a vacuum of a piece, its sorrowful. Its concavity filled with both self doubt, and deep understanding.”

“The cello in this piece is deeply connected to my voice. The two move together, attentively. Its delicate at times, then bursts into grittiness. These swells of release have a cathartic quality to them, in a corporeal sense, this sudden release of tension. Recording these sections I deliberately let it be messy and emotionally charged. Often in passages of this album without lyrics, the cello becomes my voice, my emotive vessel. They live together symbiotically through the album, but that relationship is something I focused on in this piece.”

“When I recorded the first demo of this song, I was in my studio at Goolugatup Heathcote in Perth. I caught some of the rain sound when tracking the vocal, I thought it had a lovely quality to it, so we kept it for the studio version. It adds this dimension of intimacy to the song, along with another layered field recording I took among some cows and rain in the Julian alps in Slovenia.”

“Randall and I had a lot of fun trying out different production ideas, specifically for the outro of this song. We went weird with it pretty quickly, with the addition of Henry’s strong attacks on bass, this section is rooted in a contemplative energy that swirls through the space it creates.”

Afraid - “Afraid looks at this awareness of mortality through a relationship in its bloom as well as in retrospection. There’s a sense of hope at its core, that connection can eradicate fear. It tells of learning to find freedom through loving and losing.”

“The song has two sections, the first a more standard song structure, that moves into a freeform section, guided by the connection between cello and voice. I had been listening to ‘Long division’ by Low on a writing trip with my friend Liam on the south west coast of Australia. The idea for the song jumped out at me on a walk back from these magnificent cliffs that I used to abseil down as a kid. I recorded the idea on the walk, then elaborated on it when we got back to Liams place. A couple weeks later came the freeform second section, as I felt through the significance of the song. The second section feels like a relinquishing of pain, it flutters and bursts with emotion.”

And was Undertow always going to be the albums name or was there another that nearly won the race come the time to take your hands off the project? - “It was almost going to be Fallow, but Undertow won out. I love the imagery that these words contain.”

All those poems you used to write as a young teen at night, do you think you will ever allow them to see the light of day in book form, perhaps? - “I don’t think so, even back then, they were just for my own enjoyment. I like the idea of creating without an audience.”

And with that in mind, as we’re not called Exclusive Magazine for nothing, is there a short, yet emboldened poem so far never seen outside of your possession that you could quote to us here today for print (please)? -

Liquid Gold:
“Liquid gold hardens in my mouth,
I bite down because he said hold tight.
Then with a crown of silver on my head,
He shrugged a little,
and turned away.
Now with bronze around my neck,
He tears it right from my chest.
On my knees,
I collect,
The stones he’s thrown at these of us left.”

Having won the prize for best ballerina in your class aged just 6, and knowing you still have a love for the chorography of dance, when creating your music do you ever sit back, close your eyes, and envision yourself within each one (as if it were a video) moving to each and every aural musical movement? - “I often feel a sense of movement when I’m composing. I don’t see a dancer, or imagine choreography per se, but there is an impression of movement going through my head. I often think about music vertically as opposed to linearly, perhaps this creates a landscape for movement.”

Your debut EP Wildflowers in 2023, which explored the transition from childhood to adulthood, was very well received, so I am wondering how you, Sophia, have noticeably (to yourself) changed in how you see yourself/the world around you these passing few years? - “Although I’m constantly learning and evolving, I feel the most grounded in my work now than ever. I make very emotional, dark music, but really quite a happy person. I enjoy my life, and I get to do what I love. Dare I ask for more.”

What are some of the last albums (CD, vinyl, cassette, et al) you physically purchased (vintage and/or new releases) and which one have you already gone back to listen to more and why? - “Anrimeal - Half Fool Half Empty (Lost Wisdom). Ana and I serendipitously had the same album release date! anrimeal is the recording project of Porto-born, London-based artist Ana Rita de Melo Alves. Working primarily alone and with simple tools, Ana builds immersive songscapes that retain the DIY quality and raw emotional material of their origins, while bursting at the seams with reference and meaning, sometimes deeply concealed. Ana wrote a book to accompany the album, it’s a beautiful, unique experience.”

And as we come to the end here, with regard to your upcoming new album Undertow, what would you like all the readers of this interview to know about it and what to expect? - “Undertow coalesces in a unique combination of clarity in its folk/singer-songwriter storytelling with a wholly alive and reactive bed of instrumentation. Instead of traditional structures and overly virtuosic solos, all aspects of production and performance lean heavily into spontaneity and gut feeling, reaching closer to a sense of unfiltered emotional truth. The result is an act of reification: songs with a sense of touch, of ears and eyes and flesh, coming to life around the mouth.”

And yes, we ask everyone we interview this very same question (as we are putting together a kid’s book). We here at Exclusive Magazine love Penguins and so we were wondering if you had any love for them and/or had a story of one (soft toy, zoo, chocolate bar, relative, etc.) that you could share with us? - “Although I do love penguins, I am more of a sloth gal myself!”

And finally, we asked Sophia to kindly provide a never-before-seen photograph of herself. One that perfectly personified their readiness for the world to hear her new musical endeavor. Perhaps even one that encapsulated who she was today. And kindly, this is what she sent.