Sophie Hutchings: New Album 'Become The Sky' 'Almost Feels Like A Musical Conversation'

A stalwart in the neo-classical scene, Sophie Hutchings has played a pivotal role in the genre’s movement of modern-day storytelling. Her album release, A World Outside, represents this in a sonically detailed and layered manner. The piano work spoke to the vastness of the human experience, informed by her immersive road trip throughout central Australia.

Today, Hutchings releases her most latest body of work, Become The Sky. It acts as an extension of her musical exploration in the way it represents an ode to the earth, namely the paradoxical stillness and movement, quiet and chorus omnipresent in natural places. However, her album varies in its musical elements from that of its predecessor. 

Become The Sky is a simplified arrangement of sound – an intentional approach that Hutchings cultivated to allow for space to be felt in the listening experience.

“For this album, I was always influenced by space,” Hutchings explains. “I used the recording process to escape into somewhere where there was a lot of space and that would allow me to delve into a creative space. 

“I found it an incredibly inspiring process. It was almost therapeutic for me to write music this way, and for this album, I intentionally approached it with a discipline to pull back and engage the senses in a more present manner.”

This has been an approach to music that Hutchings found inspiration in early on into her musical career. It was her discovery of Spiegel im Spiegel and other compositions that employed the use of musical sparseness and simplicity to present emotive music that initially led her to a point of curiosity in such a style. 

“I remember the very first time I heard Spiegel im Spiegel,” she says. “There is so much space in the notes, it's incredibly simplistic. There's so much space between the notes, and as a younger person, it had a real impact on me. I recall hearing that Arvo Part stated, ‘It's not how many notes you play, it's how you play them.’

“And so, I like to purposely discipline myself to pull back from the complicated elements of music and try to play what Erik Satie termed ‘furniture music,’ a sound that became a precursor to ambient music.”

This early exposure to simplified arrangements has certainly informed Hutchings’ practice, and yet it’s her adventures, journeys, and connections with landscapes that have contributed to her proudest compositional work to date.

“When I was out in the centre of Australia, the sound of nothingness was so incredibly loud,” she says. “I say that in a poetic sense, the vastness and the beauty is so incredible. There's something in that land that speaks loudly, you can’t help but feel it and embrace it. 

“I've always been a bit of a traveller, and I always like travelling. Despite the challenge that came with overseas travel, it has been places like India or the Middle East that have informed my practice. Travel allows for me to disengage from my musical mode, I am able to immerse myself in something that makes me really feel. That Central Australian trip was rather challenging too, but it’s those experiences that make up who we are, and they're often the most memorable.”

In an act of reverence for the fluid energy of the earth, and how there are parallels in an emotional experience for humans, Hutchings wrote Become The Sky as a means to soften and subdue her musical catalogue following on from her time in the desert. 

“I've always had this tradition of stepping into a more intimate album once I've completed one like the last album, and so I guess the theme was hanging around for a bit for me and went into a more intimate territory because of how those experiences make up who we are.”

Despite the musical aspect of Become The Sky assuming a simplified form, the feeling of the album is certainly not found wanting as a result. Rather, it has a depth of evocation akin to Hutchings’s other musical compositions.

“The advantage of an album like this is you're trying to keep all the elements simplistic, but that's not to say that the mood is simple,” says Hutchings. “The mood is extremely compelling. A fact that remains even though I wrote all the pieces over a very short period of time, basically over two to three days.”

This remains a process for Hutchings that allows for the opportunity to slow down, stop, and breathe —an experience she hopes audiences can engage with upon listening to Become The Sky. 

“With this kind of music, it's not about what you're thinking, it's 100% about what you're feeling and engaging those senses to just be able to stop and pause and breathe,” she says.

“Listening to this music is the same because it really helps you to disengage that busy part of our brain, and that thinking part of our brain. And you step away from that, and before you know it, you're engaging this whole emotional world where you're feeling things.”

There is undoubtedly a specificity in what inspires Hutchings to make music, namely Become The Sky; however, there is also a generalisation in the subjectivity of her compositions that allows for broad relatability.

“Often people really want to know what it is, what the music is about for you. But I think it's incredibly interpretive. You can have a specific story that is shared with a person, and I certainly want it to be relatable for them, but ultimately, there is resonance because we all embrace vastness in our own way. 

“We all experience moods from a place, even though mine might be from the Northern Territory, India, or even home, it translates to other people's minds and hearts. That's a very important part of the process for me because I want audiences to be provoked into feeling whatever comes up for them.” 

Become The Sky is Sophie Hutchings’ ninth studio album – a meandering sonic journey layering the human experience with the breath of the earth, and all their myriad expressions. 

Become The Sky is out now via Universal Music Australia. You can listen to the album here.