Anika – 7th Level Music

Anika releases Psychic TV cover and North American tour dates.

Anika shares new music for the first time since the release of her new album, Change (out now on Sacred Bones), ahead of her North American headline tour next month with live musicians Sally Wanda Whitton (bass, vox), Eilis Kiera Frawley (drums), and Zooey Rosa Agro (keys, vox). Tickets are on sale now here. The cover of Psychic TV’s “Godstar” appears on Sacred Bones’ Todo Muere SBXVcompilation out May 27th, and was recorded in tribute to the late Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, one of Anika’s biggest inspirations.

“Psychic TV, specifically the album Orchids, has been a huge influence on my music and human psyche over this musical life,” says Anika. “[Genesis] is a big inspiration, the humor and investigation element in their work. I remember going to a talk in NYC where G recommended that no-one finish art school. I like this concept. Perhaps it leaves things unfinished and room for the individual to grow shoots, continue on their own journey. Perhaps this is like music school or any creative school. I think G specifically thought the place was bull and that they could do it better on their own terms, which turned out great. They also told a story about an art school work, which involved a used tampon in the shell of a clock. It was called Period Piece. I like the humor in this piece and the deconstruction of social boundaries. They are for sure an inspiration, in how to do things your own way, carve out your own path and don’t worry too much about what other people are doing.”
Listen to Anika’s “Godstar” (Psychic TV Cover)

Anika Tour Dates
Sat. May 14 – Austin, TX @ Oblivion Access Festival
Sun. May 15 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah
Mon. May 16 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
Tue. May 17 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
Wed. May 19 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
Thu. May 20 – Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
Fri. May 21 – Vancouver, BC @ The Fox Cabaret
Mon. Mon. May 23 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
Wed. May 25 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
Thu. May 26 – Montreal, QC @ Fairmount Theatre
Sat. May 28 – New York, NY @ Knockdown Center
Sun. May 29 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
Mon. May 30 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage
Tue. May 31 – Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light
Wed. June 1 – Nashville, TN @ Third Man Records
Thu. June 2 – Memphis, TN @ Crosstown Arts
Fri. June 3 – Dallas, TX @ Cheap Steaks

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Review: Anika – Change: The Remixes

Anika has openly discussed how much she loves the dance floor as well as the dark corners of a night club, so putting out a remix album of her killer 2021 record, Change, was a no-brainer for her.

The “Planningtorock remix” of “Planningtochange” drops the pitch of her vocals and ups the beats to create a track that’s perfect for dancing in a dark basement full of sexy, sweaty people. Dave Clark‘s remix of “Never Coming Back” is somehow darker than the original. Lauren Flax‘s remix of “Critical” becomes slightly hardcore make-out music. Maral at the Controls‘ dux mix of “Finger Pies” is outstanding, mixing dub with industrial like a sexy glitch-bot.

PDBY‘s remix of “Freedom” strips the song down to a haunted house drone, like something you’d hear in a dimly lit ballroom with peeling wallpaper and warped floorboards. Lauren Flax comes back for a remix of “Change,” and it’s the closest one to a straight-up house music banger on the whole EP.

Don’t miss this is you’re a fan of Anika. It’s an interesting look at her different influences and how she’s influenced (and influencing) others.

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Anika announces remix album and tour dates.

Anika announces Change: The Remixes, out February 11th on Sacred Bones and Invada, and shares “Planningtochange” (Planningtorock Remix). As an avid fan of dance music and the communal power of the club, Anika wanted to give her 2021 album Change a wider range by entrusting it to some friends in contemporary electronic music – Planningtorock, Dave Clarke, Lauren Flax, Maral, and PDBY. The result is a remix record that illustrates both the underlying compositional depth of the album and its ability to inspire equally exciting new songs.

Anika elaborates: “Change is quite a specific album. It was made in the context of the lockdown, very much a headphones, inside-your-head record. As a big fan of DJing and dancing in dark spaces, I wanted this to go further, keep growing, expanding, so I asked some friends from very different worlds to take it somewhere else, beyond the bird-filled hills of Brandenburg. This is what happened.”

Planningtorock’s Jam Rahuoja Rostron adds: “Anika is a dear old friend of mine and I’ve loved her music right from the beginning. Her latest LP is sooooo good and I really love Change so I was super happy be able to make a remix for this which was also a lot of fun to make.”

Anika will also tour North America in May and June. All dates are below and tickets are on sale now here.

Stream “Planningtochange” (Planningtorock Remix)

Pre-order Change: The Remixes

Change: The Remixes Tracklist:
1. Planningtochange (Planningtorock Remix)
2. Never Coming Back (Dave Clarke Remix)
3. Critical (Lauren Flax Remix)
4. Finger Pies (Maral At The Controls Dub Mix)
5. Freedom (PBDY Remix)
6. Change (Lauren Flax Remix – bonus track)

Anika Tour Dates:
Feb. 11 – Berlin, DE @ Volksbühne
March 9 – Koln, DE @ Bumann & SOHN
March 11 – Lille, FR @ L’Aeronef
March 12-13 – Saint-Malo, FR @ La Route Du Rock Hiver
April 17 – London, UK @ Moth Club
April 18 – Manchester, UK @ Yes (Basement)
April 19 – Glasgow, UK @ Nice N Sleazy
April 20 – Bristol, UK @ Louisiana
May 13 – Austin, TX @ Oblivion Access Festival
May 15 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah
May 16 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
May 17 – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop

May 19 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
May 20 – Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
May 21 – Vancouver, BC @ The Fox Cabaret
May 23 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
May 25 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
May 26 – Montreal, QC @ Fairmount Theatre
May 28 – New York, NY @ Knockdown Center
May 29 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
May 30 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage

May 31 – Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light
June 1 – Nashville, TN @ Third Man Records
June 2 – Memphis, TN @ Crosstown Arts
June 3 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada

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[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Top 30 albums of 2021: #’s 5 – 1

We’ve reached the top of the chart. Who takes the prize? You’ll find out soon.

#5: Anika – Change

Good heavens…This album is so lush, haunting, and beautiful that it will sweep you away from whatever you’re doing when you play it. Anika’s voice immediately drapes over you like a luxurious robe with a knife hidden in a back pocket.

#4: Rochelle Jordan – Play with the Changes

Seriously, why aren’t more people going nuts over Rochelle Jordan? She mixes soul, house, disco, and trip hop better than most, and Play with the Changes is, if you ask me, the sexiest album of 2021.

#3: Brijean – Feelings

This lovely mix of trip hop, dream pop, bossa nova, and house music is a delight from start to finish. It was a much-needed tonic during the crappy 365 days of 2021. It’s a perfect spin for any time of year. Got the winter blues? Play this. Need a fun record for that summer beach trip? Play this. Need a boost to start your garden? Play this. Looking forward to sipping hot cider in the fall? Play this.

#2: Aaron Frazer – Introducing…

This solo record from one of the cats in Durand Jones and The Indications is one of the best soul and R&B records of 2021. Frazer puts down his trademark sharp beats and brings his other trademark, high-end vocals, with him to create a groovy, sexy blend that impressed Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys so much that he produced it.

#1: Shame – Drunk Tank Pink

This album got locked into my number one spot not long after it was released. It’s a sharp post-punk record, and I remember being more and more impressed with it after each listen. It covers everything from Brexit and the pandemic to boredom and hope for the future. It’s snarky, witty, and powerful.

There you have it. I hope 2022 is good to all of us.

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Review: Anika – Change

Dreamy. Sexy. Mysterious. Alluring. Distant. Intimate. Psychedelic. Stylish. All of those adjectives could sum up Anika‘s fine new album, Change. Or they could not. Those could all be projections one puts upon the record as it shape-shifts across its span.

The opening bass and beats of “Finger Pies” sets you off on a train across Western Europe late at night and has you noticing a beautiful person across the dining car that may be a spy, murderess, hitman, painter, or tourist looking for adventure. “My intention is my intention,” Anika sings. We don’t need to know. She’s keeping that secret for now, which only makes her more intriguing.

“Critical” is a tale of danger, both of love and of delusion, told with processed dance beats. “I always give my man the last word. I always give him what he deserves, but don’t forget that little twist of cyanide in his little gift,” she sings as futuristic synths build around her like a digital cloak. The album’s title track is possibly the most uplifting song of the year. Anika encourages us to move away from illusions and comfortable patterns of behavior in order to conquer fear and embrace one another. “We could do well to listen sometimes, and not just shout around things we know nothing about. But I think we have it all inside. I think we can learn from each other. I think we can change.” It’s a great anthem for 2021 and beyond.

Anika continues that call to action on the somewhat industrial “Naysayer” with lyrics like “Youngblood, I’m calling on you. Stand, standing tall and take what’s yours. Time, time to run the show.” “Sand Witches” is downright creepy with its warped bass and Anika’s lyrics about rivers running red with blood in England – a country she barely recognizes anymore. “Never Coming Back” is a synthwave ode to things that have slipped away from us without us even noticing (“I saw the signs. I chose to ignore them. I saw all the warnings. I saw them all.”).

“Rights” is a call to women everyone to reclaim their power (“Tall, small, tiny, full and feel your power!”). “Freedom” has Anika expressing her power underneath a Terminator film score-like synth sizzle. One can’t help but think the lyrics of “I’m not being silenced by anyone…I’m not being silenced by my learned mutism…I’m not being silenced, least by you.” reflect on something that happened over the last decade. Changes is, after all, Anika’s first solo record in eleven years. The closing track, “Wait for Something,” is a mostly acoustic heartbreaker with Anika telling a tale of how she waited and waited “for something to come…for something to break through,” but realizing that holding onto the past only drags you to death.

Anika had a lot on her mind from the last decade, and she let it all out on Changes. She has spoken about how all the lyrics of the album were written on the spot without a filter or second thoughts. There is optimism and sorrow, but few pangs of regret. We could all do well to follow her example and let go of things dragging us down into a place we think is comfortable but is actually a tomb.

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Anika shares “Rights” from upcoming album – “Change” – due July 23, 2021.

Anika – the project of Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson – shares the new single/video, “Rights,” from Change, her first new album in over a decade, out July 23rd on Sacred Bones and Invada. Following “Change” and “Finger Pies,” “Rights” drones with Anika’s beautifully plaintive voice and oscillating percussion. In her words, the song is about “turning the tables, giving power to those who normally feel disempowered. This song is about unification not division. This song is about female (/queer/non-binary/marginalised communities) empowerment – the joining of forces, not pitted against each other. This song is about wanting to escape reality but then we can never truly escape it, it will always be there to collect its dues. We can only ever achieve temporary escape. The better option is to bring whatever we want into reality.” During the song’s peak, Anika chants encouragingly: “Feel the power // feel the power // show me power.”

The accompanying video, directed by Anika and Sabrina Labis, features Anika and Mueran Humanos’s Carmen Burguess. The video toggles between the virtual and real worlds, playing with the ideas of dreams and displacement, and seeking places of empowerment. Anika elaborates: “At the end of the video, the memory of the feelings, the knowledge that it was possible, remained, that is enough to start bringing it into our own life. We all have rights.” Co-director Sabrina Labis adds: “Making videos is my way to feel power. The power of changing perspectives, escaping conservative structures and landing on a very close and free power-planet where everything is possible. Press play, take off and enjoy.”

Watch Anika’s Video for “Rights”

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Anika releases title track from her upcoming album – “Change.”

Anika – the project of Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson who is also a founding member of Exploded View – announces Change, her first new album in over a decade, out July 23rd on Sacred Bones & Invada, and shares the “Change” video directed by Sven Gutjahr who also directed the video for recent single “Finger Pies.” The follow-up to cult favorite Anika (2010), Change is beautifully fraught. The intimacy of its creation and a palpable sense of global anxiety are seemingly baked into the album’s DNA. Spread across nine tracks, the central feeling of the record is one of heightened frustration buoyed by guarded optimism. The songs offer skittering, austere electronic backdrops reminiscent of classic Broadcast records or Hi Scores-era Boards of Canada, playing them against Anika’s remarkable voice—Nico-esque, beautifully plaintive, and—in regards to the record’s subject matter—totally resolute.

Having worked collaboratively in the past with the likes of BEAK> and Exploded View, Change was ultimately the product of necessity. After recording the initial ideas by herself at Berlin’s Klangbild Studios, Anika was joined by Exploded View’s Martin Thulin, who co-produced the album and played some live drums and bass. “This album had been planned for a little while and the circumstances of its inception were quite different to what had been expected,” says Anika. “This colored the album quite significantly. The lyrics were all written there on the spot. It’s a vomit of emotions, anxieties, empowerment, and of thoughts like—How can this go on? How can we go on?”

Recorded at a time when literally everyone in the world was being forced to take stock, rethink, and reimagine their own place in the cosmos of things, Anika provides the wizened perspective of an outsider. It’s a perspective that is not lost on the British ex-pat and former political journalist, and despite the subject matter and the circumstances around its creation, Change itself is ultimately a treatise on optimism. The title track presents the album’s message writ large: “I think we can change, we all have things to learn, about ourselves and about each other.” To end the record on such a sanguine note might be one of Change’s most revolutionary gestures.

“There’s a lot of stuff I want to change,” says Anika. “Some things I sat down and decided last year, I had to change about myself and my life. Sometimes it feels helpless because the things we want to change are so huge and out of our control. Starting with yourself is always a good place. I think we can change.”
Watch “Change” Video

Watch “Finger Pies” Video

Pre-order ChangeChange Tracklist
1. Finger Pies
2. Critical
3. Change
4. Naysayer
5. Sand Witches
6. Never Coming Back
7. Rights
8. Freedom
9. Wait For Something Anika European Tour Dates:
Sept. 10 – Offenbach, DE @ Hafen2
Sept. 12 – Dunkerque, FR @ Les 4 Ecluses
Sept. 23 – Nancy, FR @ L’Autre Canal
Sept. 24 – Rouen, FR @ Le 106 Club

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Anika returns with first new music in eight years.

Anika – the project of Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson who is also a founding member of Exploded View – announces signing to Sacred Bones and returns with a new single/video, “Finger Pies.” Released in collaboration with Invada Records, this is Anika’s first new piece of music in 8 years, following her 2010 cult-favorite Anika, and the 2013 Anika EP. “Finger Pies” presents Anika’s alluring voice, which switches between singing and speaking over bass, waning brass, drums, and blares of synth. The accompanying video was co-directed by Anika with Sven Gutjahr (who has worked with Versace and Holly Herndon). The two had lived in the same apartment building in Neuköln, Berlin, during 2017 yet never met. Fate, and a bunch of people around a table 3,965 miles away brought them together for the video. It shows Anika effortlessly contemplating her adopted city with a cinematic coolness.

Anika elaborates: “A song that never had a name, like an artist that never had a face. Caught between roles, a jack of all trades, she slips between your fingers like a moment that never was, or was it? So many faces tailored to a myriad of occasions. Walls built between ourselves and the outside world. For protection. Passes grant access to another level. So where are you at? Those with all the keys, please remember, access comes with responsibility. Yet responsibility has been lost, like tissue paper in the rain, a battle without rules, to save face, exploit weakness, to save getting slayed, by the faceless generation. Welcome to the world of ‘Finger Pies.’”

When asked to describe the circumstances that influenced her beautifully fraught new work, Anika quickly articulates a set of feelings and unpredictable circumstances that are familiar to anyone who tried to make art—or simply tried to live through—the recent global pandemic. “It’s a moment caught in time,” she says.

“Finger Pies” is the first of more new music from Anika this year.

Watch “Finger Pies” Video

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