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Ana Roxanne

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Natural Wonder Beauty Concept (Mexican Summer, 2023)

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While I am a fan of both DJ Python (Brian Piñeyro) and Ana Roxanne, a collaboration between the two is not something that I would have ever foreseen happening due to the substantial gulf between their styles. Unusual circumstances can lead to unexpected places, however, and the two mutual admirers found themselves both adrift and living in NYC in 2020 (“well-loved albums aside, no one was playing shows, and a general listlessness and disconnection prevailed”). As a result, the two finally met in person and soon began working on new music together (“studio experimentation was the instinctive extension of a friendship finding its feet”). Before they could finish an album, however, circumstances changed again and Piñeyro returned to the European club scene, while Roxanne toured the world and moved back to California.

Fortunately, the pair were still able to meet up occasionally and eventually had enough material to convene in Los Angeles and Brooklyn to finish an album. Given the pedigree of those involved, it is no surprise that Natural Wonder Beauty Concept is a compelling project, but it takes some unexpected directions: while Piñeyro’s recent collaboration with Ela Minus resulted in a poppier strain of DJ Python’s “deep reggaeton,” Roxanne’s influence often steers Piñeyro’s beats in a more vaporous and ambient-inspired direction.

This was an unusual album to wrap my head around, as it feels like Piñeyro and Roxanne’s shared vision organically changed directions quite frequently. While the duo’s varied influences (HTRK, Portishead, Bjork, Seefeel, Boards of Canada) offer some insight into the elusive character of that vision, the actual roots run a bit deeper than music, as both artists have spent a lot of time “reflecting on feeling too much and feeling nothing at all.” That makes a lot of sense given the life of a touring solo artist (“You hurtle across the sky to spend a few hours in a dark club, behind the decks or on stage at the microphone. A brief grasp at transcendence, then the lights are on.”). Fittingly, the shapeshifting tone of the album’s ten pieces seems to mirror those two emotional extremes quite effectively.

For example, the opening “Fallen Angel” is a ghostly, flickering, and wordless fantasia of cooing vocals, distended beats, and subtle psychedelia, while Roxanne’s untreated vocals on the closing “World Freehand Circle Drawing” feel soulful and direct (though the inherent poppiness of that directness is undercut by the vaporous and eerily nocturnal vibe of the underlying music). That balance between “ambient” and “pop” sides unpredictably seesaws back and forth throughout the album. In fact, only the title piece lands somewhere that might be considered a seamless blend of both, as Roxanne’s hazily sensuous vocals are beautifully enhanced by a hyperkinetic jungle breakbeat.

That said, exploring different directions is not a crime (especially when you have plenty of good ideas), so there are a number of other fine pieces to enjoy throughout the album. On the more pop end of the spectrum lie “Sword,” “Drive” and “III.” “Sword” is the most dissolved and deconstructed of the trio, but Roxanne’s swooping vocal hook is gorgeous and Piñeyro continually removes parts of the beat in interesting ways. Roxanne also takes lead vocals in the more brooding “Driving,” which features a lovely wordless hook and a wonderfully shuffling, stuttering, and potentially woodpecker-inspired groove. Elsewhere, Piñeyro makes his vocal debut in the moody duet “III,” which might be the album’s biggest outlier, as it sounds like whatever the R&B equivalent of cloud rap would be called (somewhere between melancholy, anthemic, and stoned).

Notably, Roxanne and Piñeyro screened much of their “in-progress” material while driving around the LA hills at night and that seems like exactly the right context for this album, as the best moments perfectly evoke that elusive sense of feeling wonderfully alive in a hazy unreality of ambient melancholy and brooding shadows. I definitely need more of that in my own life, so maybe this will finally be the album that unintentionally makes my world collapse by awakening simmering longings and long-buried frustrations. We’ll see, I guess. There are also a couple of more avant-garde inspired pieces on the album that veer into more overtly hallucinatory territory, as “Young Adult Fiction” suggests a digitized ghost haunting a slowed-down DJ Python beat, while “Veil II” resembles a gently psychotropic kalimba piece assembled from overlapping, out-of-sync loops.

While I have yet to fully warm to the first part of “Veil,” just about every other piece would be a fine template for an entire album. Given the busy schedules and geographic distance now separating Roxanne and Piñeyro, I would be hesitant to bet on a follow up ever materializing, but the consolation prize for now is that this debut provides enough teasingly divergent glimpses of future possibilities that resourceful fans can simply let their imaginations do the rest of the work.

Listen here.

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Ana Roxanne, “Because of a Flower” (Kranky, 2020)

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Ana Roxanne’s cryptically titled debut mini-LP was one of 2019’s most pleasant surprises, as she masterfully wielded a minimal palette of hazy vocals, subtle instrumentation, and field recordings to construct a suite of songs that felt both remarkably intimate and completely untethered to conventional structure or contemporary trends. In fact, I suspect I could have been easily convinced that ~~~ was a highly coveted private press obscurity from the early ’80s. This latest release (her first for Kranky) takes a somewhat different direction in some ways, but thankfully remains every bit as beguiling as its predecessor: the field recordings may be less prominent and Roxanne’s previous impressionistic, amorphous structures have been largely replaced with more conventional shapes, yet the hooks are now stronger and the songs more memorable. 

That feels like a perfectly acceptable trade-off in my book. While I am historically dismayed when artists that that I enjoy move further away from the idiosyncrasies that made their early work so special, Roxanne proves herself to be the rare exception to that trend, as the best moments of Because of a Flower take the warmth and melodicism of ~~~ to some truly beautiful new heights.

I was both surprised and disoriented to learn that Roxanne apparently spent five years working on Because of a Flower, as it feels like a significant evolution from ~~~, yet it is entirely possible that some of these pieces were composed at the same time as her debut (or possibly even earlier) . In a conceptual sense, however, it makes perfect sense that Roxanne may have been working on two noticeably divergent releases at once, as the two feel a lot like different chapters in the same abstract memoir. On ~~~, Ana’s soundscapes seemed primarily inspired by warm feelings of nostalgia for her family and childhood. Because of a Flower, on the other hand, seems to be more thematically focused upon her intersex identity (and the more recent stages of her life). 

It would probably be extremely easy for a casual listener to miss that though, as she has an intuitive genius for incorporating those themes in subtle and oblique ways that enable her work to feel artistically honest and deeply personal, yet also resonate on a universal human level. For the most part, the album’s more personal themes manifest themselves in repurposed textbook passages, “cinematic dialogue samples and castrati aria allusions.” It was admittedly a bit of a surprise to hear found sounds borrowed from movies rather than the natural world, but she invariably makes very effective use of them (the endearing “tropical beach” ambiance of ~~~ does happily resurface on the album’s final two songs though). As enjoyable and evocative as Roxanne’s choice of samples can be, however, the heart of this album is unquestionably the blearily gorgeous vocals that float languorously over dreamlike drones or melodic bass lines.

For me, the centerpiece of the album is the slow and sensuous “Camille,” as Ana’s voice soulfully coos and swoons over a backdrop of warm organ chords and an R&B-inspired drum machine groove.There are also some snatches of film dialogue thrown into the mix, which nicely enhances an already wonderful piece by adding a sharper and more unpredictable textural layer. While I tend to think of her work as vaguely “ambient” in nature, the addition of a beat suits her aesthetic extremely well. I suspect she would have a bright future as an arty outsider R&B artist if she wanted that. 

That said, her aesthetic works just fine without a beat as well, so there is no shortage of other highlights and they head in some unexpectedly varied directions.For one, “A Study in Vastness” is absolutely sublime, resembling a ghostly, deconstructed Enya with some dark and moody undertones lurking within its fog of blurred drones. “Suite Pour L’invisible,” on the other hand, is a bit more representative of the album’s overarching aesthetic, as it is built from a warmly melodic and ringing bass motif enhanced by quietly twinkling guitar arpeggios. Musically, it calls to mind a classic 4AD sound akin to This Mortal Coil, but Roxanne’s strain of Romanticism feels too simple, intimate, and spontaneous to warrant close comparisons to anyone else: she might be exploring similar moods and using similar instrumentation, but the casual naturalness of her vocals make almost everything she records sound uniquely her own. 

That makes sense, given her working method of “beginning with ‘a drone element and a mood,’ then intuiting melody, syllables, and lyrics incrementally, like sacred shapes materializing from mist.” Her work has the effortless charm of an artist who is so full of life and so comfortable with singing that it is hard to imagine her ever making a vocal decision that does make a song instantly better (presumably because she has reached an entirely post-decision plane of pure instinct).

I would be remiss if I did not also single out the divergent instrumental “—” as another gem, as it unfolds as a gently pulsing and dreamlike reverie of burbling electric piano that organically shapeshifts into fresh tendrils of melody. The remaining three pieces are certainly likable as well, but they are a bit more atmospheric in tone, arguably functioning more as integral parts of the album’s overall arc than as individual highlights. I am tempted to describe Because of a Flower as Roxanne’s “singles album” and ~~~ as its more abstract and New Age-inspired counterpart and that would not be an objectively misleading characterization. However, each has at least one piece that muddies the waters enough to elude such easy generalizations. 

On Flower, it is the songs that begin and end the album that feel like the connective tissue linking it thematically and compositionally with its predecessor. Between those two poles, however, lies quite a wonderful four-song streak that feels like something new. A small part of me admittedly wishes that there were more “songs” as tightly crafted and rhythmic as “Camille,” but I suspect that is just the lingering part of me that craves familiarity. That part of me needs to shut the hell up, as Roxanne has done a superb job of carving out her own quiet niche in an oft-overwhelming cultural landscape and Because of a Flower is a lovely and beautifully crafted album. As an absorbing and thoughtfully sequenced whole, I suppose it surpasses the more uneven ~~~, but the two albums feel enough like complementary halves of the same vision that choosing a favorite feels like missing the point entirely.

Samples can be found here.

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Ana Roxanne, “~~~” (Leaving Records, 2020)

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I always love scavenging the internet for interesting end-of-year lists every December, as I invariably find a handful of great albums and films that I slept on like a fool. In fact, a lot of those belated finds wind up being among my favorites, as the albums I miss tend to be inspired and refreshing departures from the labels and scenes that I usually follow. This unusual debut album from LA’s Ana Roxanne was one such find from last year, as it surfaced back in March and I probably dismissed it instantly as a vinyl reissue of some private press New Age obscurity (if I noticed it at all). 

Given both the look of the album and Roxanne’s aesthetic, that is not a terribly outlandish conclusion to make, but a closer listen reveals that ~~~ is considerably more compelling and distinctive than it first appears. For example, Roxanne checks two boxes that have historically been strong indicators of a radical compositional approach: she both studied Hindustani singing in India and attended the fabled Mills College. As a result, Roxanne has an unusually sophisticated understanding of harmony and avant-garde compositional techniques for this stylistic milieu. Such a path would normally steer an artist towards an Eastern drone/La Monte Young vein, yet Roxanne deftly sidesteps anything resembling a predictable path, as ~~~ can best be described as what might result if a mermaid studied with Eliane Radigue: drone-based minimalism that evokes a soft-focus idyll of lapping waves and floating, angelic voices.

For all intents and purposes, ~~~ admittedly does sound a hell of a lot like it could have been the work of some gifted, synth-wielding yoga hermit from the ’80s. The fact that it is not, however, is noteworthy: there is nothing about this album or Roxanne’s background to suggest that she had any interest in undertaking any sort of homage to that era. More likely, she just independently wound up in a similar place simply by virtue of her similarly meditative and autodidactic bent. In fact, it seems like Roxanne’s biggest single influence was probably her own life (with a particular emphasis on her early love of R&B and all the time that she spent in church choirs growing up). 

That, in essence, is what I most love about this album, as it is all-too-rare these days to encounter art in such a pure, unselfconscious form. At its best, ~~~ sounds like the work of a composer who wants nothing more than to transform her lived experiences into something intimate, poetic, and beautiful. Moreover, Roxanne achieves that in an inventive way that feels both timeless and effortless. She arguably only threatens that perfect, idyllic spell on the rare occasions when the synths blossom into something more prominent and melodic than mere drones. To Roxanne’s credit, however, those sparing psych flourishes are almost always effective enough to justify such an out-of-character nod to recognizably “cool” influences.

The opening “Immortality” captures Roxanne in her purest, most undiluted form, as it is essentially just her voice (alternately singing and speaking) over a warm, gently quivering, and blurry bed of drones. It is quite a gorgeous piece, as Roxanne’s harmonizing vocals have an angelic quality that calls to mind Julee Cruise’s work with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch (minus all the creepy and seductive overtones and undercurrents). The next two pieces only deepen that sense of dissolving into a quietly rapturous dreamscape, as Roxanne subtly expands her palette in an increasingly layered, immersive, and reality-bending direction. 

“Slowness” is the most “composed” piece on the album, as it lies somewhere between a meditation tape, an exercise in tape-loop experimentation, and a bittersweetly lovely organ piece. The lazily intertwining melodies and warm harmonies of the latter are the best part, but the way that all of the disparate elements come together is quite effective as well (I especially like the ghostly, steadily pulsing synth loop that functions as the piece’s backbone). 

The following “It’s a Rainy Day on the Cosmic Shore” is even better still, though it admittedly takes a little while before it fully coheres. Once it does, however, it is an absolutely sublime piece of music, as crashing waves, swelling drones, and fluttering synth melodies combine to evoke a heavenly, hallucinatory beach or magical undersea grotto. Elsewhere, “Nocturne” then returns to the minimalism and swooningly lovely Siren-esque vocals of “Immortality,” while “I’m Every Sparkly Woman” approximates a curious collision of deconstructed R&B and radiant, rippling New Age bliss. The album then winds to a close with a remarkably good sound collage that blends together a church chorus, a singing toddler, lapping waves, strains of pop music from a radio, wind chimes, and a group of cheerfully bantering women.

While that final piece (“In a Small Valley”) is not my favorite piece on the album, it is a beautiful illustration of one key element makes Roxanne’s aesthetic so special and unique: her incredibly effective and intuitively organic use of field recordings. Obviously, using field recordings for texture or surrealist mindfuckery is quite common in contemporary experimental music circles these days, yet Roxanne seems to use them only to vividly evoke specific scenes and all of those scenes seem personally meaningful. As such,~~~ has an abstractly diaristic feel that suggests a languorous, impressionistic flow of poignant memories and allusions to significant moments. 

That unerring instinct for simple, uncluttered artistic honesty is evident in other ways too, as Roxanne’s elegantly blurred and beautiful voice is the true heart of her art, so she is wise to limit her musical accompaniment to little more than subdued drones and looping melody fragments (even if the more fleshed out “Slowness” is a highlight). 

It is a tricky balance to get just right, which probably explains why ~~~ is such an unusually brief album (it clocks in at under half an hour): Roxanne could have easily padded out the release with some additional drone or synth-driven pieces, but that would have diluted the power and simple beauty of her statement. This is not a unique and beguiling album because Roxanne has an especially bold experimental vision or a knack for killer synth patches—it is a unique and beguiling album because such things are relegated to a mere supporting role as she strives for something deeper, more intimate, and more elusive. When those experimental or hook-sculpting tendencies surface, they are certainly welcome, but the true brilliance of ~~~ is that it captures self-expression in its most distilled and sincere form. This is a hell of a debut.

Samples can be found here.