Annika Shares Latest Single from New Record

Oxygen is the final single-video track taken from Abyss, the new album from British-born, Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson, due April 4 via Sacred Bones. Pre-order the album HERE.

AASonically ”inspired by Breeders and Pixies, the way it creeps in slowly and then crashes with this weird chorus/part that only comes in once,” Oxygen gasps for air as we experience increased limits imposed on our bodies, be it reproductive freedoms or restrictions on trans rights.
AA”Oxygen is about feeling trapped in your own body, in your own narrative, in your own society, within the norms and expected behaviours of this claustrophobic socially constructed world,” Annika says. ”It wants to break out of this cage, it wants to breathe, it wants to be in tune with its true self, its true feelings, sensations and desires – without restriction.”

The final track released from Abyss (Out April 4th), Oxygen follows the thrashing, driving lead single and album opener Hearsay. A bold opening move that hones in on the extreme divisions between the left and right in contemporary society, it’s a song ”about media moguls – about the power of the media, whether social, TV or beyond. Parasites feeding off the blood of the public.
AA”It feels like the left are heavily scrutinised and therefore forced to micromanage their media personality,” she adds, ”like editing their biography so they don’t insult anyone, trying to please everyone, which leads to an impression of inconsistency, of untrustworthiness. But the contrast is that a lot of people on the right are getting away with everything, like flaunting their imperfections and rejoicing in the fact that they have felonies. They are consistent with their hate speech and, therefore, perceived as more trustworthy. I think it’s important to have space on the left for imperfection, for healthy debate and difference, and for all the complexities of being a human.”

It was followed by 90s alt-rock-tinged Walk Away – a ”deconstruction of the feminine – of topics considered to be a private realm. ”This song is saying all the things I want to say but am too scared to say, or that society doesn’t accept me to say,” Annika says. ”It is dealing with mental health – the state of poor mental health in these fucked up, divided, isolated, social media, war, pest, rise of the right times.
As inspiration, Henderson cites ”the reckless nature of 90s /2000s Hole / Courtney Love records – of not giving a shit – telling it how it is, not scared to offend, not scared to be cancelled. We have also lost the space for healthy debate, for difference of opinion, shutting down those we don’t agree with, removing them from our social networks.”

Like Heresay and Walk Away, the song’s accompanying video, directed by Laura Martinova, was shot in an ex-brothel in Berlin and ”plays with the socially constructed ideas of femininity, of sexuality, of sexual restriction and confronts them,” Henderson explains. ”The character is quite sufficient by herself, sexually and socially liberated – and also a bit of a mess, destroying the prim and proper idea of how a good wifey should be,” Annika explains. ”She is a hedonist, she lets herself go, she shows anger, she shows being drunk, she seems to enjoy dusting the pictures of the naked ladies very much, she is independent and breaking out of all the bars imposed by the patriarchy. The guy in the video never finds her, never even gets close, doesn’t in the slightest disrupt her life, he continues to look, but she seems to always be a step ahead.”

Anika created Abyss out of the frustration, anger, and confusion she feels from existing in our contemporary world. Notably heavier than her previous releases, and pulsing with a heavy guitar and rhythm section, the ten-track Abyss feels raw, urgent, and fueled by strong emotions.
AA”There’s so much going on in the world, and you have to sit there and watch it through a screen that you’ve allowed into your home, like a vampire who had been preying at your door, then immediately digest it, have an opinion, and publicly comment on it,” Anika says. ”The state of the world just feels like an abyss right now.”
With this new album, she wants to create a place where people can feel safe to be themselves and to unite in their diversity. ”Abyss is like a call to action. To come and figure it out together,” she concludes.

Recorded live to tape at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin (where the likes of Depeche Mode and David Bowie also recorded) in just a few days, Abyss was created live and with minimal overdubs was an important decision, Anika stresses, to capture the raw immediacy of the album. As before, she wrote the songs herself, before fleshing them out with Martin Thulin of Exploded View, and then assembled a live band to join the pair in the studio – comprising of Andrea Belfi on drums, Tomas Nochteff on bass (Mueran Humanos) and Lawrence Goodwin (The Pleasure Majenta) on guitar, with studio engineering done by Nanni Johansson and Frida Claeson Johansson.

Abyss takes Anika on a new sonic journey that was partly inspired by the sound and attitude of 90s grunge. ”I would often listen to Celebrity Skin by Hole,” Anika says. ”Courtney Love is always pushing things to the limits and she’s not scared. I think it was that rebellious nature of grunge that appealed to me.” Anika’s influences are and have always been wide-ranging – from Patti Smith to Toni Morrison to Genesis P-Orridge. Working again with her Exploded View comrade, Thulin, for Abyss, Anika explains that she consciously sought to make an album that was inherently physical: to take the listener out of their heads and back into their bodies.
AA”I feel like everyone’s holding their breath about these things that are going on in the world, and a lot of the frustration comes from your brain being overly engaged and your body being unable to release it,” Anika says. ”That’s what live shows and music are for. I wanted to make an album that would be fun to play live, to bring people back into reality. Hopefully, this album and the live show can give people a release, to be able to let go.”

The physicality of Abyss is emphasised by the androgynous bodies on the album’s cover, which are from a drawing by a teenage friend of Anika’s whom she recently reconnected with. This feels especially poignant, as teenage angst also plays a part in the album. AA”These days it feels like you have to have very catered opinions – like language has gone out the window,” Anika says. ”It makes you feel very much like a restricted child again.” With Abyss, Anika wanted to feel totally free: “It’s like I’m doing all the things that I never allowed myself to do,” she says.

While most of the tracks reverberate with a visceral density such as the edgy indie thrum of One Way Ticket, a comment upon the rise of fascism, the final track, Buttercups, is slower, wistful and haunting. But while it might initially feel like a golden-tinted paean to nostalgia, Anika is quick to emphasise that it, like all of the album’s tracks, has multiple meanings: ‘You can bring flowers to a first date, but you can also bring them to a funeral,’ she points out.

A core truth of Abyss is that nothing in life is simply black and white. With this new album, she wants to create a place where people can feel safe to be themselves, and to unite in their diversity. Abyss is like a call to action, she says. To come and figure it out together.”

Check out the video for Oxygen below – 

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Abyss tracklist – 
1. Hearsay
2. Abyss
3. Honey
4. Walk Away
5. Into The Fire
6. Oxygen
7. Out Of The Shadows
8. One Way Ticket
9. Last Song
10. Buttercups

EU & UK Tour Dates –
Sun. Apr. 20 – Berlin, DE @ Volksbühne
Thu. Apr. 24 – Cologne, DE @ C/O Pop
Fri. Apr. 25 – Tourcoing, FR @ Le Grand Mix
Sun. Apr. 27 – Brussels, BE @ Ancienne Belgique
Mon. Apr. 28 – London, UK @ Omeara
Tue. Apr. 29 – Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew
Wed. Apr. 30 – Manchester, UK @ YES (Pink Room)
Thu. May 1 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Fri. May 2 – Belfast, UK @ Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival
Sat. May 3 – Dublin, IE @ Whelans
Mon. May 5 – Brighton, UK @ DUST
Tue. May 6 – Paris, FR @ Gonzai Night @ Petit Bain
Wed. May 7 – Strasbourg, FR @ La Grenze
Thu. May 8 – Düdingen, CH @ Bad Bonn
Fri. May 9 – Zürich, CH @ Bogen F
Sat. May 10 – Frankfurt, DE @ Mousonturm
Thu. Aug 7 – Hamburg, DE @ Kampnagel Sommerfest
Fri. Aug 8 – Rees-Haldern, DE @ Haldern Pop Festival
Sat. Aug 9 – Fahrenwalde, DE @ Detect Classic Festival, Schloss Bröllin
Sun. Aug 31 – Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival

Annika | Website | Bandcamp | Instagram 

Main Image by Nastya Platinova ©

Social Image by Anne Roig ©