Real Life Buildings – Racing the Sun
Nice Apple – Are You Still There?
V.V. Lightbody – Babe, Honestly
Nico Hedley – Late Bloomer
Gracie Gray – Morphine
Spencer Radcliffe & Everyone Else – Bloodletting
Pleasure Systems – Heirloom
Ana Roxanne – Slowness
Kin Hana – Fog
Rainwater – Pink Flowers
Christelle Bofale – U Ouchea
Prudence – Smile & Nod
Operators – Faithless
Belaver – Driver
Mr Husband – Friends
Rose Hotel – Running Behind
Jeremy Squires – Somersault
Bad Books – Lake House
Yammerer – Poisonous Reptilian Colleague’s & Co
Britt – Trial Period
Wild Yawp – Femme Girl
Forest Management – Blue Leaves
Robert Stillman – Ritual
Everyone is Dirty – Hit-Girl
Merin – Coral Island
Lavender Bones – Over Again
Luke De-Sciscio – R.O.B.Y.N.
Anna Wiebe – Fortune
Young Elk – Gossip Magazines
Emma Frank – I Thought
Eamon McGrath – GUTS
Jacob Faurholt – The Dark Isn’t Right

Like what you hear? Catch up with the rest of our Monthly Mixes.

The post May 2019 Roundup Mix appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The journey from her mother’s CD collection to Uttarkhand is more than an interesting anecdote to flesh out a bio, each step is intrinsically linked to what has become Ana Roxanne’s distinctive and evocative brand of music. “It was [in India] that she began to see the singer – the Diva – as a symbol of divinity,” explain the liner notes of her EP, ~~~. “That the unique power of one’s voice comes from the vulnerability of using the body as an instrument.” Viewed in this way, Roxanne’s life has been less a linear journey and more a gradual uncovering of something more profound, each new experience unveiling a wider network of interconnection and meaning.

Swirling within the smoky ambience and subtle drones of opening track, ‘Immortality’, the first words on the release make this clear. “I was only dreaming,” Roxanne says in a plain, spoken-word delivery. “A past encounter resurfacing / from deep violet water.” In keeping with the meditative aims, the track never rises beyond its subdued sound, and indeed neither does follow-up ‘Slowness’—the background drones never making good on their threat to push through the digital babble. That the lack of crescendo is conspicuous and acknowledged by spoken word lyrics quoting Milan Kundera.

“Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared?”

‘It’s a Rainy Day On The Cosmic Shore’ presents tidal field recordings pocked not by natural drizzle but rather a static buzz, a natural world melded to the digital, while ‘Nocture’ explores the stasis of late-night worrying, the body’s solitude matched by the soaring breadth of the mind’s wandering. The track is a good example of the sensitivity of the record, Ana Roxanne dropping guard and caution in order to more fully delve into the unseen. “Be it romance, love, or worship of a deity,” explains the album description, “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.”

The hauntological tone of ‘I’m Every Sparkly Woman’ evokes a version of reality that never came to pass, before closer ‘In a Small Valley’ draws things back the the present, finding beauty and meaning in the quotidian. The song highlights the true purpose of the album, Roxanne’s art not some linear quest toward a higher level of existence, but rather a considered attempt to understand and explore that which is around her.

~​~​~ is out now via Leaving Records and you can get it from the Ana Roxanne Bandcamp page.

Photography by Tammy Nguyen, cassette art and design by Jen Shear

The post Ana Roxanne – ~​~​~ appeared first on Various Small Flames.