Interview: EMA

Erika M Anderson, under the moniker EMA, released her sophomore album Past Life Martyred Saints in 2011 after her drone-folk project Gowns disbanded in 2010. She gained the kind of media hype usually attached to breakthrough (and groundbreaking) records by alternative artists, especially stylish and attractive alternative artists from the West Coast. From Anderson’s perspective, all of this attention manifested as her being recognised (and misinterpreted) by strangers online which, quite naturally, freaked her out.

Anderson retreated to anonymity in the Pacific Northwest, read a lot of dystopian literature, and allowed the futuristic visions of George Orwell and William Gibson to inform her own interaction with the technological sphere. She wrote about all of this – as well as her love of grunge – in her new album, tellingly titled The Future’s Void, which is due out April 8 through Matador Records. Writer Courtney Sanders chatted to a bedridden-with-the-flu Anderson, via Skype, about the album and you know, data collection by the NSA.

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