From the sessions that created ANOHNI’s critically acclaimed 2023 album My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross comes a new unreleased gem, ‘Breaking’. A stripped-down trio of guitar, clarinet and layers of jazz-infused vocals, at first distilled and then volatile, ‘Breaking’ is a stunning addition to ANOHNI’s vital canon.
Born in the UK and raised in Amsterdam and California, ANOHNI relocated to NYC in her late teens, forming her group The Johnsons in 1998 and establishing a unique path as an artist with a focus on animist and eco-feminist themes. ANOHNI‘s musical journey has spanned genres – from electronic experimental to avant-classical, dance, and soul. Achieving breakthrough success in 2005 with I Am a Bird Now (2005), she garnered the UK’s Mercury Award. Releases since include The Crying Light (2009), Swanlights (2010), and live albums Cut The World (2012) and TURNING (2014). In 2016, she released the sharply political electronic album HOPELESSNESS, produced by Hudson Mohawke and Daniel Lopatin, noted as one of the year’s top ten albums by the New York Times. That same year, she was nominated for an Academy Award (best song) for the environmentalist elegy ‘Manta Ray’ featured in the film Racing Extinction (dir. Louie Psihoyos, 2015). ANOHNI has collaborated with numerous pioneering musicians throughout the course of her career including Hercules & Love Affair, Bjork, Oneohtrix Point Never, Yoko Ono, Mykki Blanco, Cocorosie, Neneh Cherry, Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull, and more.
ANOHNI‘s sixth studio album, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross (2023), continues to examine societal structures, spirituality, and our relationships with the biosphere. The record was named Album of the Year by The New Yorker and The Toronto Star. Politiken awarded it five hearts and called it “a delicate flame ignited by the soul music of the past,” while GAFFA characterized it as “an otherworldly experience.”
The artist reaches for courage, resilience, and ceremony in the face of an unprecedented contemporary landscape, and emphasizes, “For me, there’s no heavenly respite; Creation is a spectral and feminine continuum, and we remain an inalienable part of Nature.”
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