|
 |
KeyboardMag.com >> This Month >> Anna Oxygen
Skip to [ Story Content and jump story attachments ]
Music Makers Anna Oxygen| April, 2006“Hip-hop and feminism have a lot to learn from each other,” muses Anna Oxygen, who finished This is an Exercise just in time to begin her MFA program in digital media at CalArts. At first, her statement sounds like a provocation, but bear with her and it makes perfect sense. “The ’90s ‘Riot Grrl’ scene in Olympia, Washington, was very supportive of female musicians,” she continues. “And a lot of us were going beyond the singer-with-guitar thing and getting into electronics, partly because of the big indy-rap presence there. I’d also been into technology since someone gave me a Casio when I was nineteen.” Exercise is no hip-hop album, though. Its beats, ranging from four-on-the-floor to downtempo and wrung out of pawn shop drum machines — an old BOSS Dr. Rhythm, and “my latest, most high-tech acquisition, a Roland MC-505 Groovebox” — form a Kraftwerk-esque foundation for lush, multi-layered vocals evoking Kate Bush’s production values. “I had opera training in school, was always in a lot of choirs, and now recording vocal harmonies is one of my favorite things to do.” When it comes to songwriting, Anna cites dramatically diverse influences. “You may or may not catch it from listening, but two huge things for me are dark songwriters like Leonard Cohen,” she says. “Then that sort of ’80s aerobics-class instructional music, designed for someone to lead a group to. Adapting that is a great vehicle for telling an audience a story.” Some of her stories are inspired by dreams, others by the nightmare of loving a toxic person, such as “Hypertension” whose reso-bass burbles menacingly under the vocal lead-in, sounding for all the world like she’s riding the cutoff knob on a vintage analog synth. “Believe it or not, that’s the old Dr. Rhythm. My model had some bass sounds and effects, and it died just after finishing that song. Partly it’s because of not having a lot of money, but I’m just fascinated by getting sounds out of old or cheap gear. Usually, it can sound a lot better than most people think.” Asked what piece of not-so-cheap gear she’d like to own for her next record, she needs no time to ponder: “An Akai MPC-2500. It sequences in the way I’m used to, but is a sampler too. I want to experiment a lot more with sampling next time.” |
Keyboard Magazine is part of the Music Player Network.