FRIDAY FEB 01, 2019
529 & Speakeasy Promotions & Irrelevant Music Present:
Anika
Where.Are.We | Night Cleaner | TWINS / That Which Is Not Said
Anika
Annika Henderson is a musician, poet and artist who rose to fame as ANIKA with two highly acclaimed eponymous records (Recorded with Geoff Barrow of Portishead and his band Beak>, released on Stones Throw in the US), and was touring the world. She is well known as a DJ too, hosts a radio program on BCR – Berlin Community Radio, is seen and heard in experimental cinema and collaborates with a variety of Berlin, London, or Mexico City based artists and musicians among them Jandek, Shackleton, Michael Rother (Neu!), Dave Clarke (Skint BMG), Andreas Reihse of Kreidler, T.Raumschmiere (Sleeping Pills and Habits), Doireann O'Malley, Ricardo Domeneck, Stine Omar / Max Boss (EASTER), Phillip Geist (Live Video mapping project and soundtrack in Tehran, Iran) or Yann Tiersen. Last year, Anika released an album with her new WOLFYPIEHANDSMGMT | wolfypiehands.com | wolfypiehands@nym.hush.com Mexico City-based project, Exploded View on Sacred Bones (US).
In 2017, Anika released a string of new material, comprising of two releases with new partners and a follow-up record with her Mexico-City based band, Exploded View. In July was the release of her new collaboration projection with bass outsider, Shackleton, in the form of a full length LP released on Shackleton’s own Woe To The Septic Heart! label and accompanied by a string of exclusive live dates. Next came another new collab with Techno legend, Dave Clarke, on his longawaited full-length LP The Desecration Of Desire, which came out in October (Skint BMG). The year was rounded off with a follow-up EP from Exploded View in November, released again on Sacred Bones (US)
“Political Journalist” isn’t a credential we usually have in musician’s bios, but this is exactly what Anika was doing while living between Berlin and Bristol, when she met Geoff Barrow. The producer was looking for a new singer to work with his band Beak>, and it was immediately clear they shared the same musical vision, including a love of punk, dub and 60s girl groups.
Just a week later Anika and Beak> (Barrow, Billy Fuller and Matt Williams) went into the studio to begin recording material. The resulting album was recorded in twelve days, live, with the four together in one room. Dub with no overdubs. The collaboration is political, trashy, dub, punk, funk … a cohesive sound, and experience in uneasy listening.
In the tradition of short-lived but deeply infuential 99 Records and the NYC’s 80s No Wave nexus, the nine songs on Anika run the gamut from experimental rock (“Yang Yang”, “Offcer Offcer”) to covers of folk (“Masters of War”) and pop songs (“Terry”, “I Go to Sleep”), while showcasing reverb-drenched ancient drum machine rhythms.
Annika Henderson is a musician, poet and artist who rose to fame as ANIKA with two highly acclaimed eponymous records (Recorded with Geoff Barrow of Portishead and his band Beak>, released on Stones Throw in the US), and was touring the world. She is well known as a DJ too, hosts a radio program on BCR – Berlin Community Radio, is seen and heard in experimental cinema and collaborates with a variety of Berlin, London, or Mexico City based artists and musicians among them Jandek, Shackleton, Michael Rother (Neu!), Dave Clarke (Skint BMG), Andreas Reihse of Kreidler, T.Raumschmiere (Sleeping Pills and Habits), Doireann O'Malley, Ricardo Domeneck, Stine Omar / Max Boss (EASTER), Phillip Geist (Live Video mapping project and soundtrack in Tehran, Iran) or Yann Tiersen. Last year, Anika released an album with her new WOLFYPIEHANDSMGMT | wolfypiehands.com | wolfypiehands@nym.hush.com Mexico City-based project, Exploded View on Sacred Bones (US).
In 2017, Anika released a string of new material, comprising of two releases with new partners and a follow-up record with her Mexico-City based band, Exploded View. In July was the release of her new collaboration projection with bass outsider, Shackleton, in the form of a full length LP released on Shackleton’s own Woe To The Septic Heart! label and accompanied by a string of exclusive live dates. Next came another new collab with Techno legend, Dave Clarke, on his longawaited full-length LP The Desecration Of Desire, which came out in October (Skint BMG). The year was rounded off with a follow-up EP from Exploded View in November, released again on Sacred Bones (US)
“Political Journalist” isn’t a credential we usually have in musician’s bios, but this is exactly what Anika was doing while living between Berlin and Bristol, when she met Geoff Barrow. The producer was looking for a new singer to work with his band Beak>, and it was immediately clear they shared the same musical vision, including a love of punk, dub and 60s girl groups.
Just a week later Anika and Beak> (Barrow, Billy Fuller and Matt Williams) went into the studio to begin recording material. The resulting album was recorded in twelve days, live, with the four together in one room. Dub with no overdubs. The collaboration is political, trashy, dub, punk, funk … a cohesive sound, and experience in uneasy listening.
In the tradition of short-lived but deeply infuential 99 Records and the NYC’s 80s No Wave nexus, the nine songs on Anika run the gamut from experimental rock (“Yang Yang”, “Offcer Offcer”) to covers of folk (“Masters of War”) and pop songs (“Terry”, “I Go to Sleep”), while showcasing reverb-drenched ancient drum machine rhythms.
Where.Are.We
2 decades of tinkering with musical instruments can go a lot of different ways and that's exactly where Christopher Ian Brooker went and is going with Where.Are.We. He wistfully combines elements of ambient electronica, afro beat, and hip hop and stews it with the heat of raw psychedelic rock and roll. Live he lets the material stew a bit more; bringing in moments of improvisation and raw emotion, followed by somber lulls of fading outros. He has graced the stage with the likes of Tobacco, Wax Tailor, and Jel (of Anticon fame) and has worked on countless sessions across Atlanta and the country. The first full length And.Who.Are.All.These.Mystics was named one of the top 10 albums of 2012 by Ohmpark and the new EP Engineer's Handbook Vol. 1 was honored in Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta 2013 and voted Best Trip-Hop Krautrock Pysch-Pop Underdog in Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta 2014.
2 decades of tinkering with musical instruments can go a lot of different ways and that's exactly where Christopher Ian Brooker went and is going with Where.Are.We. He wistfully combines elements of ambient electronica, afro beat, and hip hop and stews it with the heat of raw psychedelic rock and roll. Live he lets the material stew a bit more; bringing in moments of improvisation and raw emotion, followed by somber lulls of fading outros. He has graced the stage with the likes of Tobacco, Wax Tailor, and Jel (of Anticon fame) and has worked on countless sessions across Atlanta and the country. The first full length And.Who.Are.All.These.Mystics was named one of the top 10 albums of 2012 by Ohmpark and the new EP Engineer's Handbook Vol. 1 was honored in Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta 2013 and voted Best Trip-Hop Krautrock Pysch-Pop Underdog in Creative Loafing's Best of Atlanta 2014.
Night Cleaner
TWINS / That Which Is Not Said
That Which Is Not Said is an album about learning to accept oneself within, and accept the reality of all that comes from without. It’s an eponymous abstract exposition on navigating the realms of intimacy that the living world inevitably unveils and their equally inevitable fallout, the panic of abandonment and the loss of desire, and dragging oneself back up the hill once the lonely valleys lose their allure. Written and recorded over the course of two years in TWINS home studio in Atlanta with various synths, samplers, drum machines, and his very own flesh-and-muscle vocals, That Which Is Not Said is the result of countless studio sessions and experiments that were refined and distilled into the songs presented here, rigorously worked out through live performances and repeated critical overhaul. The material was all conceived more or less the same way: a mood or feeling would be channeled through whatever machines were plugged in at the time and eventually a foundation would be developed upon which a loose structure would be improvised. Experimenting and throwing around vocals came next, making up phrases and lyrics on the fly until something clicked and a pathway cleared through the fog and mist. TWINS (the acronym from which the album derives its title, if one’s curious about the order of origin) is the mutant machine-pop project of Atlantan producer, label operator, and all-around aesthete-visionary Matt Weiner. Having spent the better part of a decade reveling in a moody murk that intersects seductive synth-pop with Featureless Ghost and grotesque industrial-dance grooves in his own right as TWINS, Weiner has more than proved his sincerely sinister and auspiciously artful finesse of synth-based music. Operating from his home studio, arrayed with various tools of the trade, Weiner tempers his subtle scourges of sound with an unending sense of bold exploration, processing tracks of pulse-heavy aural catharsis. When performing these songs live, he brings an array of hardware to back up his flooring vocal performances, using his entire being to work the audience into a frenzied trance. When not making music as TWINS, Weiner also runs the CGI Records label and co-runs the DKA label, between the two releasing music from Boy Harsher, Profligate, Alex Falk, High-Functioning Flesh, VALIS, Scott Fraser, Beau Wanzer, Featureless Ghost, Golden Donna, and more. Weiner also performs in the duo Pyramid Club with Chris Daresta, and produces music in the studio with Stefan Ringer as SM42 and with the esteemed CH Rom as Wo.
That Which Is Not Said is an album about learning to accept oneself within, and accept the reality of all that comes from without. It’s an eponymous abstract exposition on navigating the realms of intimacy that the living world inevitably unveils and their equally inevitable fallout, the panic of abandonment and the loss of desire, and dragging oneself back up the hill once the lonely valleys lose their allure. Written and recorded over the course of two years in TWINS home studio in Atlanta with various synths, samplers, drum machines, and his very own flesh-and-muscle vocals, That Which Is Not Said is the result of countless studio sessions and experiments that were refined and distilled into the songs presented here, rigorously worked out through live performances and repeated critical overhaul. The material was all conceived more or less the same way: a mood or feeling would be channeled through whatever machines were plugged in at the time and eventually a foundation would be developed upon which a loose structure would be improvised. Experimenting and throwing around vocals came next, making up phrases and lyrics on the fly until something clicked and a pathway cleared through the fog and mist. TWINS (the acronym from which the album derives its title, if one’s curious about the order of origin) is the mutant machine-pop project of Atlantan producer, label operator, and all-around aesthete-visionary Matt Weiner. Having spent the better part of a decade reveling in a moody murk that intersects seductive synth-pop with Featureless Ghost and grotesque industrial-dance grooves in his own right as TWINS, Weiner has more than proved his sincerely sinister and auspiciously artful finesse of synth-based music. Operating from his home studio, arrayed with various tools of the trade, Weiner tempers his subtle scourges of sound with an unending sense of bold exploration, processing tracks of pulse-heavy aural catharsis. When performing these songs live, he brings an array of hardware to back up his flooring vocal performances, using his entire being to work the audience into a frenzied trance. When not making music as TWINS, Weiner also runs the CGI Records label and co-runs the DKA label, between the two releasing music from Boy Harsher, Profligate, Alex Falk, High-Functioning Flesh, VALIS, Scott Fraser, Beau Wanzer, Featureless Ghost, Golden Donna, and more. Weiner also performs in the duo Pyramid Club with Chris Daresta, and produces music in the studio with Stefan Ringer as SM42 and with the esteemed CH Rom as Wo.