Erika M. Anderson (EMA) Announces Deluxe Edition of "Past Life Martyred Saints" / Show at Music Hall of Williamsburg on March 16, 2012

EMA - Angelo by souterraintransmissions

EMA has announced the first dates of a spring North American headlining tour, which will launch on March 1st at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco, CA and continue through March 16th at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY. Tickets for the show at MHOW go on sale on Friday, Dec. 16th at 12PM (EST) and are $12 in advance and $15 DOS. All of the announced tour dates are listed below.

Year-end praise has begun to roll in for EMA's debut album Past Life Martyred Saints (Souterrain Transmissions), which has continuously garnered acclaim throughout 2011 from The A.V. Club, Flaunt, Foam, NPR, Nylon, Pitchfork, Popmatters, Refinery29, Rolling Stone, SPIN, Stereogum, Time Out New York, Under The Radar, Village Voice, and Zink, among others. The album has already found spots on best of '11 lists both here and abroad, including the BBC Music Writers' Top 25 Albums of 2011 (#20), The Quietus Albums of the Year 2011 (#27), SPIN's 50 Best Albums of 2011 (#3), and Stereogum's Top 50 Albums of 2011 (#7), while The Sunday Times (UK) named her the #1 New Artist of 2011. Album track "California", meanwhile, can also be found on year-end lists such as Consequence Of Sound's Top 50 Songs of 2011 (#7), Rolling Stone's 50 Best Singles of 2011 (#39), and SPIN's 20 Best Songs of 2011 (#3).

EMA - former GOWNS singer/guitarist Erika M. Anderson - has spent the better part of the year on the road in support of the May release of Past Life Martyred Saints. Since March, she and her band have performed at festivals including SXSW, the Pitchfork Music Festival, The Great Escape, Primavera Club, and the CMJ Music Marathon, while also touring aross the US, UK, and Europe as both a headliner (selling out the Mercury Lounge and Glasslands in New York) and as support to CSS, MEN, Wild Beasts, Kurt Vile, Zola Jesus, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., among others.



A deluxe edition of Past Life Martyred Saints will be released exclusively via iTunes on February 7th, 2012 and will feature: original iTunes bonus track "To Leave With Love"; videos for album tracks "California", "Milkman", and "Marked"; and her cover of Nirvana's "Endless, Nameless", originally featured on SPIN's Nevermind tribute album Newermind, as well as the track's accompanying video. EMA's recent single Angelo/Marked is currently available as a limited edition 7-inch (only 1,000 copies printed worldwide) exclusively via Insound and digitally via all major retailers. The single's new song B-side "Angelo", which features a guest verse by Mz'Gorjis of Oakland, CA's Platnum Platnum Glam Squad, is streaming above.

EMA spring 2012 North American headlining dates:

MAR. 1 -- SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- RICKSHAW STOP
MAR. 2 -- LOS ANGELES, CA -- NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM
MAR. 6 -- DENVER, CO -- HI-DIVE
MAR. 8 -- MINNEAPOLIS, MN -- 7TH STREET ENTRY
MAR. 9 -- MADISON, WI -- THE FREQUENCY
MAR. 10 -- CHICAGO, IL -- LINCOLN HALL
MAR. 11 -- CLEVELAND, OH -- BEACHLAND TAVERN
MAR. 13 -- TORONTO, ON -- THE GARRISON
MAR. 14 -- MONTREAL, QC -- IL MOTORE
MAR. 15 -- BOSTON, MA -- BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL
MAR. 16 -- BROOKLYN, NY -- MUSIC HALL OF WILLIAMSBURG



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EMA (Erika M. Anderson) - "Past Life Martyred Saints" CD Review

DOWNLOAD: EMA - "The Grey Ship" (from Past Life Martyred Saints)
STREAM: EMA - "Kind Heart" (16 -minute cover of Robert Johnson's "Kind-Hearted Woman")

The debut CD (out May 10th) from former Gowns guitarist/singer Erika M. Anderson is darkly beautiful and haunting. On Past Life Martyred Saints, Anderson weaves hypnotic narratives on top of music that is as delicate and turbulent as her emotionally raw lyrics. This is the sort of music that you could easily imagine being included in David Lynch's next film and Bitch Magazine's blog remarked "this is the music you hear when you're entering into the eye of the storm."

The South Dakota native, San Francisco by-way-of Los Angeles transplant EMA is an entirely self-taught musician and home-recording engineer. After getting her feet wet as the guitarist for legendary folk/noise band Amps For Christ, she formed the genre bending, cult and critical favorite Gowns with Ezra Buchla in 2004. Gowns' Red State and their entrancing live show earned the band due praise in The New York Times ("an intense but surprisingly pretty album"), Pitchfork ("one of the most jaw-dropping live bands on the American DIY underground circuit"), Village Voice ("totally gorgeous and shattering"), and LA Weekly ("Anderson shreds a guitar, sings, emotes...like a woman possessed"), among others, burning fast and bright before parting ways amicably early last year.

It is hard to pin this disc down with a specific genre label as, aside for a consistently dark melancholia and a shimmering "4AD-style" aura, Anderson seamlessly skips between genres that range from lo-fi indie folk to drone to industrial. (Note: EMA opened for Throbbing Gristle in San Francisco on their last tour). While the music pulls the listener into this disc, there are few points of light in Anderson's haunting tales of society's losers and outcasts and the raw intensity of her delivery leaves you out on the ledge with these characters. Her vocals ranges from spoken word to double-tracked choruses to gothic shrieks as she tells tales of ritual cutting and goth murder ("Butterfly Knife"), the bruises of past relationships and the lament of past excesses ("Marked") and the potential for having to repeat one's mistakes in the next life ("Anteroom" - video below). All of this culminates in the surprisingly uplifting "Red Star" which builds to a glorious crescendo as the disc comes to a close.



EMA is playing a few dates in the UK this month (tour dates below) and US tour dates will follow soon.

EMA Tour Dates:
05-11: London, UK - The Macbeth
05-12: London, UK - Cargo (w/ Scout Niblett)
05-13: Manchester, UK - FutureEverything/Islington Mill (w/ Scout Niblett)
05-14: Brighton, UK - The Great Escape @ NME Radar Stage (Horatios)

Links:
EMA

EMA (Erika M. Anderson) Releases Video for "California" from Forthcoming Solo Debut

EMA just released the video for "California," the first from her debut album Past Life Martyred Saints. Directed by Leif Shackleford, the clip is a one-take performance with no cuts, set against a backdrop of footage of her native South Dakota and her adopted hometown of West Oakland, CA. EMA, the new project from ex-Gowns singer/guitarist Erika M. Anderson, will release Past Life Martyred Saints in the US on May 10th, 2011 via Souterrain Transmissions.

The first single, "The Grey Ship", was released March 8th and features a 16-minute cover of Robert Johnson's "Kind-Hearted Woman" as the B-side. A free MP3 of "The Grey Ship" is available here.



Past Life Martyred Saints is filled with crashing and rhythmic, eerie and elegant, booming and building melodies. Throughout the album, self-taught home-recording engineer and searing guitarist EMA treats fidelity and distortion like another instrument, as on the gauzy, fidelity-mixing "The Grey Ship" and the fuzzed-out piano and pealing guitar ode "California." "Marked," a dark, breathy reverie of raw vulnerability, transmutes into a gorgeous, melancholic organ-fueled melody, illustrating EMA's preternatural knack for finding the shocking beauty hidden within the most discordant moments. While the majority of tracks see EMA manning all duties herself, the hypnotic lullaby-esque build of "Breakfast" and the defiant album closer "Red Star" were recorded with a full band, featuring her sister Nikki on drums and Aaron Davis (who also records solo as ACRE) on bass. With a voice that's at once breathless and gutsy and can rise to the brightest yell, EMA establishes herself here as a singular creative force with which to be reckoned.

Gowns was known for its volatile live shows - which were heralded by LA Weekly and Village Voice, among others - and EMA's recent performances at SXSW are already earning high praise again. Of her first showcase, The Los Angeles Times wrote, "...there's a little bit of punk rock at the heart of Anderson's songs, which give what could have been folksy confessionals a more aggressive framework", while Pitchfork declared "She's a wonder to behold" and Bitch magazine's blog remarked "this is the music you hear when you're entering into the eye of the storm." EMA will head overseas to play a short run of shows in the UK in May; a current itinerary is below. US tour dates will be announced soon.

EMA UK tour dates:
MAY 11 -- LONDON, UK-- THE MACBETH
MAY 12 -- LONDON, UK -- CARGO*
MAY 13 -- MANCHESTER, UK -- FUTUREEVERYTHING
MAY 14 -- BRIGHTON, UK -- THE GREAT ESCAPE NME RADAR STAGE
* supporting Scout Niblett

Links:
EMA

EMA (Erika M. Anderson) Releases Debut Single "The Grey Ship" from Forthcoming Full-Length

DOWNLOAD: EMA - "The Grey Ship" (from Past Life of Martyred Saints)

EMA, the new project from ex-Gowns singer/guitarist Erika M. Anderson, will release her debut single "The Grey Ship" via Souterrain Transmissions on March 8th, 2011. "The Grey Ship" is the lead single off EMA's upcoming first full-length album Past Life Martyred Saints, which will be released later this spring by Souterrain Transmissions.

The seven-minute "The Grey Ship" can currently be streamed and downloaded courtesy of Souterrain, and has already received a much-deserved shout-out from Pitchfork, which deemed the cut "suitably epic." The B-side is equally ambitiously glorious: a 17-minute cover of Robert Johnson's "Kind-Hearted Woman," on which she explores and revels in her adoration for lengthy, noise-filled tracks. "I love really long songs, really long pieces, and I wanted to see if I could make an engaging piece using primarily just voice and guitar," EMA explains. "And I love the sound of guitar feedback. Tonal guitar feedback is one of my all-time favorite sounds."

While sharing elements of the spectral, simmering and subdued haunt of Gowns' 2007 debut (and only) album Red State, "The Grey Ship" takes that band's experimental and feedback-soaked electronic folk to new places. The grand track begins with a lo-fi, gauzy yet sunny mix of acoustic and electric guitars and otherworldly tones as EMA's resolute whisper of a voice floats above. Then midway through a sudden, electrifying bass drop marks the shift to high fidelity, her voice and the music's intimacy all the more palpable without the haze. Of the shift, EMA says, "I imagined it being like when Dorothy opens the door to Oz and the whole world turns from black and white to Technicolor." Given the song's subject matter - a rumination on the Viking funeral ships of her ancestors - the change in fidelity also fittingly serves as a "sonic signifier" for transferring from the earthly plane to one beyond.

The South Dakota native, San Francisco by-way-of Los Angeles transplant EMA is an entirely self-taught musician and home-recording engineer. After getting her feet wet as the guitarist for legendary folk/noise band Amps For Christ, she formed the genre bending, cult and critical favorite Gowns with Ezra Buchla in 2004. Gowns' Red State and their entrancing live show earned the band due praise in The New York Times ("an intense but surprisingly pretty album"), Pitchfork ("one of the most jaw-dropping live bands on the American DIY underground circuit"), Village Voice ("totally gorgeous and shattering"), and LA Weekly ("Anderson shreds a guitar, sings, emotes...like a woman possessed"), among others, burning fast and bright before parting ways amicably early last year.



Links:
EMA