Date: Friday, December 10, 2010
Venue: Littlefield (Brooklyn, NY)
Text by Jim Hoey and Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi
Date: Wednesday, December 15 , 2010
Venue: the Rubin Museum in New York
Text, photo, videos and interview by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi
Interview by Jim Hoey – Photos by Marilyn Cvitanic ——————————This interview was conducted at TriBeCaStan’s West Side studio, with helicopters rising and falling along the riverside, and the three of us, John Kruth, Jeff Greene, and myself, surrounded by the instruments of their trade, culled from a lifetime of travel and exploration. Fresh from a sold-out CD release party at Joe’s Pub for their latest offering, 5 Star Cave, the two offered insight into how they go about re-imagining folk music from around the Middle East, Northern 
Africa, and other parts of the world. Based out of the crossroads of NYC, they have the advantage of hearing some of the traditional music they are inspired by pumping from cabs and bodegas, yet their embrace of the strange and foreign in music goes above and beyond mere curiosity or dabbling, and passes into the realm of living scholarship. Indeed, both have gone to the countries whose music they cherish, and have played with the masters, so they’ve got the authenticity down, and when you hear them grooving along with their top-notch Folklorkestra, you don’t doubt that what you’re hearing is the real thing.
Interview by Jim Hoey
(courtesy of Anima Anonima)
If you can make it happen that’s really good. Just a quick shot to Japan, a quick run to Europe, you know…..
H: There are enough bands around here doing that, yeah.
Interview by Jim Hoey
(courtesy of Anima Anonima)
Anima Anonima light up the stage as a trio, ideally, or when their drummer isn’t available, they go it as a duo. What results is a barrage of creeping sonic exploration, mixing an array of effects, noisemakers, live vocals, delay, samples and live drumming with drop beats and jungle tangled together, to form cinematic rock-disco soundscapes that might find you dancing or zoning off, perhaps simultaneously. Embedded in the neighborhood of South Williamsburg for years, they can mix anything into a noisy beat and bounce it out to a crowd live, electronica with real multi-instrumentalists at the helm. Here’s what Heidi and Gus had to say about Hope St. in Brooklyn, MIDI machines, electroclash, sleeping with spiders, and possibly-poisonous Catholic convents…
Can you talk about the beginnings of Anima Anonima?
