The Obsession With Her Voice

Erika Angell | Up My Sleeve [Video by Maxime Corbeil-Perron]

The Obsession With Her Voice

by Erika Angell

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1.	Dress Of Stillness 07:07 video	buy track
2.	Up My Sleeve 05:32 video	buy track
3.	German Singer 05:23	buy track
4.	Never Tried To Run 03:38	buy track
5.	One 02:39 video	buy track
6.	Open Eyes 04:03	buy track
7.	Bear 03:15	buy track
8.	Let Your Hair Down 06:01	buy track
9.	Good And Bad 04:51	buy track
10.	Temple 02:58	buy track

about

Erika Angell still remembers the first time she sang this way. The Swedish-born musician was three and a half years old, alone at dusk atop a hill, staring down at the landscape around her parents’ farm—tangled woods, darkening houses—and from somewhere deep inside her, she found a voice. It was a song without language, without any specific melody; it was flowing and easy and free. “This memory still defines the essence of living, to me,” she says. A memory of pure music: untamed, unhesitant, open-hearted.

Four decades later, now based in Montreal, Angell is “coming back to the beginning, somehow” with a debut solo album that reaches back toward that early childhood evening on a hilltop, when the music was raw, solitary and boundless. The Obsession With Her Voice is an expression of Angell’s inexhaustible love for art and music, a celebration of all the ways she has learned to articulate her instrument, a work of experimental exploration and feminist power that shimmers, cracks and shatters as it gathers the strands of one woman’s musical life. As a child, Angell was taught lieder and opera music by her choir-leader mother; as a teenager in the countryside, she spent all of her days studying jazz; later, she’d explore free improv and post-industrial electronics in a duo called The Moth. 14 years ago, Angell founded the acclaimed, Polaris-nominated band Thus Owls, whose five LPs have traversed jazz and indie rock’s outer reaches. Angell has also collaborated with artists ranging from Daníel Bjarnason (Ben Frost, Sigur Rós), Arve Henriksen (Supersilent) and Lisen Rylander Löve (Midaircondo) to Liam O’Neill (SUUNS) and Patrick Watson, as well as inaugurating the New Music trio Beatings Are In The Body with Róisín Adams and Peggy Lee.

The ten tracks on The Obsession With Her Voice form a riveting collage, blending Angell’s searing and searching vocals with synths and electroacoustics (mixed brilliantly by Sam Woywitka), Jonathan Cayer’s mazelike string arrangements, and incandescent drum improvisations by Mili Hong. Songs like “One”, “Temple” and “Open Eyes” are poetic, through-composed song-sculptures, musing on identity and disagreement. “Never Tried to Run” evokes Angell’s childhood idol Nina Hagen, weaving a snaky, sultry portrait of change, while “Up My Sleeve” shivers with a vivid worldliness: the singer in a state of emergency, watching the flames climb higher. Angell never gives in to cold experimentation or the willfully abstruse; even a song like “German Singer,” which narrates a concert over processed vocal snippets and a metronomic pulse, is fundamentally an invitation: a tribute to art’s value, to its power to seduce.

Throughout, Angell pushes and processes her voice, plunging overtop noise and percussion, tracing melodies of fearless complexity, instantaneity and conviction. Listen for echoes of Scott Walker’s The Drift, Jenny Hval’s Blood Bitch, Brigitte Fontaine’s Comme à la radio and Sidsel Endresen & Stian Westerhus’s Bonita. “I was interested in the meeting-point between being ‘in’ yourself, ‘in’ your own world, and when you meet the outside,” Angell says. “I’ve never forgotten my evening on the hill—singing freely, without judging myself. Sending my energy out into the air. When I’m able to do that, bridging that breaking-point, it feels like a good thing. For the world, and for me too—to remind myself, and everyone, that we can do it. That it’s allowed. We can hold all these real faces of ourselves, in front of each other, and show each other that attention.”

The Obsession With Her Voice is Erika Angell’s attempt to express a feeling: a windswept one, raw and unfeigned. Songs that explode, music that trembles like a vibration on a string—a singer sharing an insight and also a wish. “The sting above the heart…” she sings on “Let Your Hair Down,” “What does it mean? What is art?” And: “How can I be it?”

Press for Thus Owls:

"Erika Angell’s off-kilter vocals have a wonderful knack for the less obvious harmony and the technical ability to back it up; her understated talent combines with stark arrangements, a powerfully windswept feel, a rough elegance." The Line Of Best Fit

"She is ten, twenty singers in one, as if PJ Harvey, Karen Young, Marianne Faithfull, Martha Wainwright and Patti Smith, among others, had provided her with DNA samples to enrich her exploratory palette. Erika's voice sits alongside the greatest indie female artists who are not afraid of anything." Le Devoir

"Thus Owls are one of those bands that seem ludicrously doomed to be underrated. Ludicrously, because it’s difficult to believe that this band’s dramatic and winding pop is so emotionally engaging. Doomed because, let’s face it; pop culture often refuses to award anything intellectual. The Swedish/Canadian group aren’t interested in dumbing anything down, which makes their live show so spectacular. Angell’s soprano howl splits the difference between divine and demonic, the band thrashing behind her in time, a performance skillfully unhinged." Under The Radar

"Thus Owls are a rare gem in the Montreal music scene that keeps making music according to their own terms, rooted in avant-garde jazz, improvisation and experimental rock that challenges you to rethink your expectations of what an indie band should sound like. Despite jarring stylistic shifts, the album maintains its coherence thanks to the deep, slightly raspy voice of Erika Angell which acts like a guiding presence." Exclaim!

credits

released March 8, 2024

Erika Angell - vocals, keyboards and live electronics
Mili Hong - drums
Andrea Stewart - cello
Audréanne Filion - cello
Scott Chancey - viola (1,7,8,9,10)
Thierry Lavoie-Ladouceur - viola (1,2,4,6,8)

Music and lyrics by Erika Angell.
Except “Dress Of Stillness” by Rainer Maria Rilke from 'Poems from The Book of Hours', and “Temple” by Erika Angell and Jonathan Cayer.

String arrangements by Jonathan Cayer.

Produced by Erika Angell.
Co-produced by Sam Woywitka.
Recorded and mixed by Sam Woywitka at Studio Mixart and Hidden Ship in Montréal
Mastered by Brock McFarlane at CPS Mastering in Vancouver, 2023.

Artwork by photographic artist Tim Georgeson.

Thank you Sam, Mili, Jonathan, Andrea, Audréanne, Scott and Thierry for the devotion and love that you put into this music. Thank you Don Wilkie, Ian Ilavsky, Amélie Malissard, Tim Georgeson, Sean Michaels, Pietro Amato, Mischa Karam and Estelle Priest for your endless support.
Thank you Simon - my love, and Ingrid - my sun.

Erika Angell gratefully acknowledges the financial support of Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Canada Council For The Arts.
Erika Angell remercie le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec et le Conseil des arts du Canada pour leur soutien financier.

Constellation acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Québec, the Government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.
Constellation reconnaît l’appui financier du gouvernement du Québec, du gouvernement du Canada et des radiodiffuseurs privés du Canada.

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about

Erika Angell Montreal, Québec

The Montreal-based Swedish vocalist and composer Erika Angell embodies a profound love for art and music, driving her to relentlessly push creative boundaries and champion originality in the arts. Angell will release her debut solo album on the legendary label Constellation in early 2024, an electroacoustic work of unfettered vocal exploration and expressionist avant-electronic composition. ... more

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