ani on REVELLING/RECKONING
Q:
DO YOU THINK OF "REVELLING/RECKONING" AS TWO SEPARATE ENTITIES, OR A
DOUBLE ALBUM?
Ani:
It's not really a "double album," because it's not one thing that was
too long for a [single] disk, but it's not two separate things, of course.
The albums are really distinct in their nature, and the process of my "new
release" becoming two records [went like this:] At first I thought I was
just making a [single] record, and there were certain songs that I couldn't
reconcile with other songs, there was just material that was so disparate; I
had this idea that I wanted to make an album that flowed, and I couldn't
[accomplish that with a single disc].
My songs come from all the different experiences and emotions in my life,
you know; it's not all party music and it's not all quiet, introspective
songs, so my albums have always been journeys of sonic peaks and valleys,
and emotional peaks and valleys, and opposites butted up against each other,
but I started to wonder if I was even gonna be able to do that with some of
these songs. The minute I decided I was gonna make two records, then of
course the process protracts [laughs], because you go from one hour to two
hours, and so I kept recording and kept writing and working through ideas,
and the first record, when I originally conceived of it, the Revelling
record, I thought it was gonna be more revelling, you could dance all the
way through it, but it just didn't turn out to be that kind of year. So the
first record, Revelling, it's a real wide span of musical contexts that I
exist in. There's everything from solo guitar and voice to instrumental
pieces of music that I constructed by myself playing all the instruments,
and then there's band recordings, live in studio, the vibe of the band
playing together, realizing certain songs, and then there's me the
spoken-word Little Poet Girl, with musical weather that exists around and
within the landscape of the poem. So there's all [kinds of] different
focuses; some of the tracks on Revelling are just about how much I love to
play the guitar, and some of them are about ideas, and some of them are
about grooves. I think the most true sense that "revelling" has really
issued forth from this first record, for me, is just revelling in the act of
playing music; there's a lot of that on the first record.
The Reckoning record is much more song-oriented, much more idea-oriented,
and it's much slower and much quieter. [laughs] It's kinda slow and quiet
all the way through, which is kind of a new thing for me. There's a lot more
"reckoning" : with myself, with my society. It's much more idea-oriented
from beginning to end. But there's also solo guitar interludes between
songs, and bridges between songs that I've never done before, so there is
purely the act of making music on that record, also.
[...] Even though the albums are really distinct pieces of work and they have
much different flavors, much different characters, it is a double album in
the sense that the journey really is from track one, disc one to track
sixteen, disc two. And by the time you get to the end of the first disc,
you're already set up for the fall [laughs] of the second disc.
Q:
IN MANY OF YOUR EARLIER SONGS, YOU WROTE ABOUT BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH
FOLKS YOU'D MET ON THE ROAD; THE RELATIONSHIPS ON THIS ALBUM SEEM A BIT
DEEPER...
A:
Life is different now; I've made commitments, I certainly have
responsibilities that I never had before in my life, and really being good
for that, being up for it, is kickin' my ass. [...] On these records I have
noticed myself looking back to growing up in the 80s, where my consciousness
comes from, what I've known my society to be since I became a conscious
adult, and what that means in terms of where I am now and where the society
is now.
[...] In the distant past of my songwriting, there was a certain amount of
gallantness to my persona and my songs, and I don't think it was because I
was trying to be gallant, but because I was trying to propose solutions to
myself: okay here's the pathetic little person that exists in the world and
here's the person that she can imagine herself being. And always trying to
inspire myself to that place through my music, through my art; I mean, why
do we make art but to teach ourselves things, to bring ourselves somewhere
that we can't go through math [laughs] or whatever. I think now, though,
that my persona in these new songs is not so gallant, not very strong
necessarily, and not so sure of themselves, not so sure that she's gonna
figure it out, even - whatever "it" is. That's a tougher place to write from,
that's a deeper level of ... truth to be shown in one's experience, I guess,
for me. [...] So there's a lot of reckoning just with the process of my work
this year.
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