Ana Roxanne - ~~~

A Closer Listen

Southeast Asian musician Ana Roxanne was born and raised in the Bay Area of LA. Her love of music began at an early age, initially through her mother’s CD collection of 80’s and 90’s R&B divas. She was raised in the Catholic Church and was soon a regular in the choir. Like a sweet offering of incense, Ana’s sublime voice rises up.

For Ana, singing is a lifelong passion. She began studying jazz and classical music, which led to her touring and performing in old cathedrals, whose lofty arches promote the ascension of tones, and where deep quietude only helps to heighten the power of the music. With its heart of sacredness, stillness, and purity, choral music goes hand-in-hand with ambient. And this stillness can be found in ~~~.

A near death experience also helped to forge a long-lasting connection between music and spirituality. Ana is more than willing to go deeper in this fascinating (and limitless) area, to study and to reap the rewards of the ongoing relationship, concentrating on the voice, which acts as a gateway into the spiritual world. She also promotes music as a healing force, which is so true, and her transfixing tones become a kind of therapy, a remedy and a restoring after the horrors of personal tragedy.

Above all, Ana’s music is cleansing and restorative, like a baptism in fresh waters. Echoing with infinite space, her music reaches out with wider arms and graceful, spiraling tones. Electronics blend in with her lilting voice, and long, deep drones, like that of an organ in the midst of devotion, offer a chance to spend time in a sacred place, to disconnect from the day and reconnect with a Higher Power. The drones help to develop a deep reverence and respect, coming face-to-face with a deity. The tones seem to worship, bowing down in surrender and love. The Universe responds, wrapping itself around these notes, which flicker like frail candles, around Ana’s weaving, angelic words and ethereal harmonies. The voice itself is such an honest, vulnerable instrument – perhaps the truest instrument of all. The voice begins to take on the power of divinity, capable of creating and destroying inner worlds and outer shells, shaping the air around it with comforting syllables of love or word-bombs of hatred. ~~~ flows on and on, transcending its environment.

‘..the unique power of one’s voice comes from the vulnerability of using the body as an instrument. Be it romance, love, or worship of a deity, in order to access such depths of emotional expression, one must be willing to be intensely vulnerable, lay one’s heart in the open air, expose what is kept hidden’.

Ana’s voice concentrates on love. The warm atmosphere is gentle, cleansed, and clear in its vision. “I’m Every Sparkly Woman” morphs Whitney Houston’s classic into an ambient zone, its vocal flow and overall pressure released from its tight, pop-oriented stanzas of verse/chorus/verse. She merges classic lyrics with an airy atmosphere that lacks a specific current, free-floating on a light rhythm of strobing bleeps and blurred arpeggios instead of being caged in a drum-loop, locked in 4/4.

Ana explores themes of gender & identity. In the autumn of 2018, she came out publicly as intersex, and she now dedicates herself to being a voice for her community, speaking out about social justice for intersex youth. Gentle laughter and friendly conversation lie on the tip of the record. They tell of the power of language. Words have the capacity to either heal or hurt; they can affect the soul. In the splashing of water and the cleansing of the final track, “In a Small Valley”, Ana finds peace and contentment. She chooses love. (James Catchpole)

Available here

The Quietus

Full of deep warbling organs and chirping electronic pings, Ana Roxanne’s ~~~ is an ode to self-recognition and revelation that delves deep into personal and sonic depths. Despite having originally been released quietly in 2015, ~~~ was brought to a wider audience in 2019 upon it’s re-release with Leaving Records.

A plethora of synth and organ sounds sees Roxanne’s production reach heights at which it births a warming buzz, enveloping the sounds around it, smothering sparse vocal melodies and gushing field recordings of an incoming tide. The shores captured within opener ‘Immortality’ provide the lulling colours lyrically referenced as “deep violet water[s]”; these tides form a shimmering and rippling dream-mirror, through which Roxanne is subjected to “a familiar gesture misplaced in time”. Hums intone overlapping melodies beneath whispered spoken word passages.

Water runs throughout this project, finding tribunes in each track. As a sonic theme it permeates the project as a reminder of the fluidity of life and the potential for change. In the final cut, ‘In a Small Valley’, a river is splashed in amidst – and often over – the instrumental, asserting its importance. Ringing metallic chimes play a wondering melody, soon infiltrated by a small church choir. This gradually grows in presence before once again falling away and drowning in the stream, before sparse chimes re-emerge to strike an unsure duet with the semi-melodic gargles of a baby.

Literature buffs may recognise the spoken word over ‘Slowness’ as a set of lines from Czech author Milan Kundera’s work of the same name. In a tune full of juxtapositions set to an autumnal warmth, this statically spoken verse contrasts both the speed of the frantic electronics and the natural air to the low droning cellos. The words see Roxanne, through Kundera, question reality and memory, a theme that grows throughout the journey of ~~~.

In a further case of borrowing words, ‘I’m Every Sparkling Woman’, Roxanne channels Chaka Khan as she investigates and asserts aspects of her femininity. It seems notable that she utilises another’s words to tackle her gender, as only three years after the original release of this project did Roxanne enlighten the world to her being intersex. In an interview with Bandcamp, Roxanne talks of still being unsure of the way she identifies but feeling that through living as the RnB divas she adored growing up when performing ‘I’m Every Sparkling Woman’, she can love herself regardless.

Requiring a deep and attentive listen, Roxanne’s project is certainly not one for anyone, yet still exists for those who can apply themselves to it, opening up a world of electronic sensuality.

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