Occasionally, an album comes along that just stops you in your tracks. Out August 28th on La Rubia Producciones.
We listen to a lot of new music at Reading Indie Life. A surprising amount of it is good. A lot of it can be quite similar though, following different trends or genre clichés. Once in a while, something passes our ears that just leaps out and makes you stop and really take it in. This is one of those albums, it feels less from another country than another planet. Or perhaps another time period, there is something about it that you could imagine soundtracking a medieval castle.
Anyx is a Berlin based artist, musician and vocalist by the name of Anna Lucia Nissen. They are also the front-person of the trio Anchoress, this is their debut solo album. Whilst based in Germany, this is all sung in English. Anyx works in layers. Starting from the vocal and then just adding in the instruments until the song feels right. It gives the album both a sense of minimalism and a grandness to it, a shifting sense of scale.
The title Starlink refers to seeing stars in the sky and then discovering they were manmade satellites. There is a tension between nature and technology running through this. It was the first single ‘Ladybirds Spine that brought Anyx to our attention. She has a unique voice that carries huge depths of emotion within it. The track is so well structured with peaks and troughs, it lets you sit with the emotions for a while.
If we enjoyed that, the next single completely blew us away. ‘Window In Your Eyes’ has a rare magic to it. It twinkles away before building with absolute majesty using a harp as a key instrument.
The rest of the album doesn’t quite hold that high peak but it has a very good go at it. ‘Pylon,’ one of several instrumental tracks, has an almost Radiohead like quality to the sound structuring. ‘Strange Times’ brings the electric guitar more to the foreground, along with ominous bells – it really is an entire mood. ‘Spring Birds’ is a haunting spoken word piece. ‘Marian’ is also full of fragile, delicate beauty.
This won’t be for everyone. I am sure some will find it a touch pretentious, some may find its main palette of sounds a little bit repetitive, the pacing a little bit too slow. For us, this is so close to being an out and out classic of originality that it needs to be praised and celebrated. This album needs sharing and shouting about. There is a haunting magic here.
Essential Tracks: ‘Ladybirds Spine,’ ‘Window In Your Eyes,’ ‘Strange Times’ and ‘Marian.’
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