invada allstars feat. anika - '99 red balloons'

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It's finally out. The long anticipated cover of Nena's classic released as part of the protest over Trident has been underpinned with the bass line from Under Me Sleng Teng and it's now something quite different and just wonderful.

anika and obi blanche mixtape

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This is a very special mixtape from one of my favourite female performers and is a wonderfully eclectic collection with dance, punk, hip-hop and all sorts thrown in and for all that it all blends in beautifully.

my ying to your yang

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Anika has posted a remix of her cover of Yoko Ono's Yang Yang. The jury's still out on this. It sounds a bit clunky to me. Maybe after a few more listens I might like it.

anika

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I'm terribly hungover today and I've been browsing the internet for music videos where I have found this great interview with Anika. It seems a great time, then, to do my review of her debut album which is something I've been wanting to do for some time now.

A bit of background first to this unique singer. She is primarily a political journalist hailing from Germany and spends her time between Berlin and Bristol. I say primarily as she seems now to be focussing on her music career. She was introduced to Beak>, Geoff Barrow of Portishead's new(ish) band, who were looking for a quirky singer. The result was the eponymously titled debut album from Anika and the most original album of 2010. It didn't hit many 'best album of 2010' lists as it came out too late but I have it in my top 3 from last year. The album was recorded in about 11 days and it shows. This is a good thing in my eyes as the whole feel of the album has a deliberate roughness to it. It's a mixture of overtly political songs, covers of girl band classics, heavy dub, so-so drumming and the most amazing singing you'll hear around today.

Anika doesn't have a classic beautiful singing voice, instead opting for the Nico-esque talk/sing in a really heavy German accent. After hearing this interview it's clear the accent is affected but once again this works to the album's favour. I hope I'm not doing her a disservice but the intensity of her political views, the aggression, the accent and her looks remind me a lot of those black and white photos of Gudrun Ensslin, one of the leaders of the Baader-Meinhof group. 

The music is difficult to place in time because a lot of the tunes are now at least 30 years old and the styles borrowed - punk, pop, wall of sound and dub interchange so frequently and the format of the album is very traditional - 9 songs, most of around 3 to 4 minutes and coming in at about 40 minutes in total. When I first heard this album I listened to it, I think, about 5 times straight as I was that in awe of it. I have a few criticisms with it, firstly the drumming on the album is a bit too wonky at times and secondly, where they've been at their most political in 'Masters of War' it feels a bit weak to me. They've sampled an interview with a US Marine who fought in Iraq in much the same way as Paul Hardcastle's '19' Vietnam samples but to be honest, the quote used has far too much hand-wringing. I wonder if it would have worked better if they'd have gone for some gung-ho, yankee doodle, alpha male bollocks quote from George W Bush in an ironic way. Don't let these comments detract from what is an incredible album though.

Here's the interview in full: