Rosa Anschütz

If there is a way to describe the affect of us transitioning from the physical realm into the digital / virtual (as individuals and as a culture), musically, this EP would be that. Vertigo spells. The obliteration of a fixed point of view. A mild sense of disaffect offset by extreme wonder at the encounter of the beautiful uncanny. Anxiety. Panic attacks. Euphoria. Distortions of perspective, space, self and body. The feeling of being omnipresent and dissolving / drowning in an infinite, glowing, vibrating architecture of liquid data – simultaneously. Being subject and object all at once. All of this is captured in the highest emotional resolution possible on Rigid, the stunning 4-song post-techno / post-punk / noise / neo new wave / art pop EP from transmedia artist, composer and vocalist Rosa Anschütz. 

When I listen to a track, I love that it can sometimes intensify a moment or kicks me out of reality and replaces it with a non-place. - Rosa Anschütz

The material for the EP was written in 2018, between Berlin and Vienna, the two cities that Rosa considers her temporary homes. What she brought to the Hiti Papa studio in Kreuzberg, Berlin – where she worked with producer Jan Wagner – was a series of instrumental sketches and “lyrics as a series of daily snapshots”, the latter written and stored on her phone. During the sessions these rudimentary drafts were transformed into elaborate, orchestral, synth-driven, highly dramatic arrangements – the type of music that is so charged with acute emotion that it demands a visceral response from the listener and, possibly, even complete surrender. 

Feeling anxiety and numbness are both important to me, and I face them often in my daily life. It’s my duty to explore them and find their origin so that I can choose to overcome them or keep them, depending on the situation. I think that this is a way of learning something about myself. - Rosa Anschütz

Rigid is a personal EP. It’s a patchwork made of daily notes, dreams, nightmares and loose ruminations on life –  stitched together with analog synths and thick, cavernous reverbs. It’s also a great example of the type of music that humanises the sounds of machines, in many ways harking back to the beginning of electronica, although nothing outside of the actual feel is vintage here. The production is warm, fleshy, with carefully sculpted spaces. The vocals are mesmeric, oscillating between spoken word, singing and "voice as strings". All of this, sum total, makes for the perfect (non)place to get lost in. Think of a rigid body thrown into the torrents of a stream of consciousness, it could be you.