silent green and Digital in Berlin are happy to present the Berlin premiere of American ambient musician Ana Roxanne.
Her self-released EP was later reissued by Leaving Records before signing with Kranky for her official full-length debut, 2020’s Because Of A Flower. Working at the interzone of electric meditation, dream pop, and ambient songcraft, her inspirations span the secular (R&B divas of 1980’s and 90’s) and the spiritual (Catholic choral traditions in which she was raised), synthesized into a uniquely intuitive sonic language, equal parts atmospheric and ancient, healing and hermetic.
The sublime songs comprising New York-based musician Ana Roxanne’s second record, Because Of A Flower, germinated gradually across five years, inspired by interwoven notions of gender identity, beauty, and cruelty. She describes her process as beginning with “a drone element and a mood,” then intuiting melody, syllables, and lyrics incrementally, like sacred shapes materializing from mist.
The experience of identifying as intersex informs the album on levels both sonic and thematic, from spoken word texts borrowed from tonal harmony textbooks to cinematic dialogue samples and castrati aria allusions. It’s an appropriately interstitial vision of ambient songcraft, a chemistry of wisps and whispers, sanctuary and sorrow, conjured through a fragile balance of voice, bass, space, and texture.
Pitchfork wrote about their debut album Because of a Flower — “The California ambient musician’s debut LP pulls from new age, dream pop, Medieval choral music, and Hindustani singing for a hypnotic and tender meditation on gender, identity, and self-love.”
Despite a background studying at the prestigious Mills College in Oakland, Roxanne’s music rarely feels conceptual, instead radiating an immediate and emotive aura, rooted in the present tense of her personal journey. She speaks of the flower in the title as a body, singular and sunlit, as many petals as thorns, an enigma beholden only to itself.
Ana Roxanne
Thursday, 6.4.2023 | Doors 19:00 | Starts 20:00 CET
silent green Kulturquartier | Gerichtstraße 35 in 13347 Berlin-Wedding
