A sensory deprivation tank is a person-sized pod filled with salt water. Epsom salt water to be exact, and enough epsom salts to create the specific gravity needed for a person to float with their face above the water without having to try. The water is kept at body temperature, around 95 degrees. After a while, you can’t tell you’re even in water anymore, it just feels like you’re floating in a comfortable abyss.
This experience is called float therapy. It’s a glimmering, buoyant, new-age sensation. These are also the words I would use to describe "Vågen Igen," the debut album by Denmark’s Mona Moroni – the album I would want to listen to while in a sensory deprivation tank.
I don’t know what made me connect the two in my head. I’ve never done float therapy. But something about this album feels watery, deep-sea like. Maybe it’s the jellyfish on the cover. Its translucent body reveals some sort of glittering veins or vertebrae, as the fish seems to float upward and toward nowhere in particular. When I listen to this album, I seem to too.
(1) "Hun Venter Derude" – the first track – washes over you with great glassy bells and a grooving bass line. Mona Moroni sings in Danish, and even though I don’t know the words she’s saying, I can understand her perfectly. This song is beautiful and reassuring, equally suited for dancing in the kitchen and crying in your bedroom.
(3) "Forfra" is the third song of nine. Put this one on when you’re alone with your crush and some ambient lighting. Touch hands for the first time. Or something like that.
(4) "Langsomt" starts with briefly alarming wind chimes and random synth keys, but melts into a song you’re glad you didn’t skip. It is quickly becoming my favorite on the album. Fast-forward to the three minute mark for a delicious sonic experience, somewhere in between a sitar and 80’s synth piano, with bright little echoes that float above the mix like bubbles rising to the water’s surface.
(6) For peak underwater vibes and a more upbeat pop track, try "Stemmer Fra Fjernsynet." The atmospheric abyss is driven forward by punchy drums, some great guitar fills, and my favorite vocal performance from Moroni on this album. Try not to nod along with the beat.
Float therapy is $80, at least. Listening to "Vågen Igen" by Mona Moroni is free. If you want to feel what it’s like to enter an underwater kingdom of dreams, press play. If you want to feel somehow soothed by lyrics in a language you don’t understand, press play. If you want to feel again the feeling of blowing bubbles in the pool and watching them rise toward the surface from your goggles, press play. Want to see if I’m overhyping it with long-winded loquacious fluff? Press play.