SOHN, a Vienna-based, London-born singer/songwriter/producer with a stirring falsetto, also happens to be an admirably economical music critic. In an interview with Billboard last fall, he reduced his woozy brand of electro-tinged R&B to a single word: "wavy."
"Tremors," SOHN's debut album due April 8 on 4AD, is certainly fluid. His songs move in overlapping segments of undulating synths and precision-cut vocal loops, rarely ending in the place they began. As hinted at in the album's title, another single-word descriptor, movement is a central preoccupation for SOHN -- both within the music itself and, thankfully, the body of the listener.
Count Lorde and Miguel among the moved. Since the release of "Bloodflows," his mesmerizing debut single for 4AD posted to SoundCloud in the spring of last year, those two artists, and other practitioners of icy R&B with a much larger profile than his, have recruited SOHN to write and produce material for forthcoming projects. Super producer Dr. Luke snapped him up as a writer for Prescription Songs, his publishing venture with Big Machine Music.