Heidi Mortenson: Dont Lonely Me

Heidi Mortenson
Don't Lonely Me
Wired
2007-07-10

Sultry, silly, soulful, playful, gender-bending, pop experimentalist… Heidi Mortenson is all this and more. A Berlin-based sound constructor, Mortenson offers her second LP in Don’t Lonely Me, another dose of highly addictive glitch-pop, Casio-style grooves, and electro girl-girl/girl-kitty love. Yeah, that “kitty” reference alludes to the bizarre and yet compulsively listenable opening track, “Tiger”, with its many blips, meows, and jungle sounds. Just try playing that song on your stereo with your cats around. They go nuts. Mortenson credits her father’s mechanical inclinations as being an inspiration to her music. The clanging and banging of his auto repair work suitably impressed upon her young artistic brain an appreciation for the rhythms and melodies of industrial and mechanized sound. Mortenson comes across as something of a sound librarian, packing her work with a richness of tones and found sounds, juxtaposed with her often soulful vocals. Her music has been labeled “tomboytronica” and that seems apt given her androgyny and girl love, as well her inventive electronic compositions. Mortenson is shamefully underappreciated, perhaps not surprising given how her music challenges and bravely defies genre boundaries as much as her person resists gender definitions.

RATING 8 / 10