Anna Homler (Los Angeles, 1948) is a performance artist, vocalist and composer
whose vocal acrobatics fall halfway between Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson.
She started out in 1980 with performance art and around 1985 began to focus
on the human voice and invented a language of her own.
Pharmacia Poetica (1987) is a multimedia performance and installation
that she would continue to develop over the years.
The five-song cassette Breadwoman (Pharmacia Poetica, 1985) documents
a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Steve Moshier.
It featured the first versions of Ee Che, OO Nu Dah and Yesh' Te.
The 2016 reissue adds two lengthy compositions:
the repetitive loop of Sirens (12:06) and
the esoteric ceremony of Celestial Ash (17:06).
Her first triumph was the phantasmagoric album
Do Ya Sa' Di Do (AMF, 1992), featuring
Ethan James, Steve Moshier, David Moss and Bernard Sauser-Hall.
She fully revealed her surreal persona in
songs such as Moshier's Ee Che, a bluesy chant over an industrial beat,
the cubistic carillon Do Ya Sa Di Do and the
folkish dance Oo Nu Diya.
After lending her vocals to the first incarnation of
Voices Of Kwahn
and to the project Sugarconnection (sound sculptors Frank Schulte and Axel Otto)
on the 20 brief vignettes of Plays Alien Cakes (No Man's Land, 1994),
Homler teamed up with
keyboardist, guitarist and violinist Geert Waegeman and percussionist Pavel Fajt
for the 15 abstract folk dances of
Macaronic Sines (april 1995 - Lowlands, 1995), with lively lullabies like the funk-jazz Komida Kapak,
and for the live album Corne de Vache (Victo, 1997).
House of Hands (ND, 2000)
with Viola Kramer, Steve Roden, Nadine Bal, Alain Neffe, and Lyn Norton
offers twelve of her under-developed songs.
Kelpland Serenades (september 2001 - Pharmacia Poetica, 2005) is a live improvised collaboration with electronic keyboardist and contrabassist Steuart Liebig.
Anna Homler started the project Puppetina with
multi-instrumentalist Stepanie Payne. Their
Piewacket (PNT, 2001 - ReR, 2005), featuring accordionist Ethan
Holtzman and credited to Puppetina, was devoted to Homler's simulation of international folk music.
The catchier tunes, such as M-Bira Song and
Sweet Clarina 12,
sounded like a hybrid of
Meredith Monk and
Enya.
But the lively Country Western Song had a rustic and down-to-earth
quality that was missing from both the other visionaries of imaginary folk
music.
Cafe Song evokes a Slavic wedding,
Scary Song an expressionist cabaret,
Monkey Jazz a swinging radio group from the 1950s,
and
Accordian Song a Louisiana madhouse party.
Electronic noise and hypnotic procedures permeate the Far Eastern-sounding Do Wa Do and Organ Song.
The voice is distorted beyond recognition by the electronics in
Bongo Song.
And no less creative are the instrumentals Bell Song, a micro-concerto for toy instruments and found sounds,
French Song, for sampled voices and Parisian merry-go-round,
and Barbie Song, six minutes of
musique concrete for kindergartens.
The Many Moods Of Bread And Shed (The Orchestra Pit Recording Co, 2012)
documents collaborations with London-based violinist Sylvia Hallett
between 2002 and 2010.
Homler plays found objects, ranging from a walkie-talkie to a doll heart,
while Hallett plays violin, accordion, mbira, jaws harp, piano and various
sound effects.
The pieces belong to three broad categories. First you have the
relatively more conventional "exotic" songs, based on modes and ideas imported
from imaginary regions of the world, such as the
Plutonian Lullaby and Radio Fish,
the mock-religious hymn Omina Noctis,
and the accordion-driven Ma'dona Sa'ye, the catchiest of the bunch.
Second, the surrealist chamber music, well represented by
the concrete noises over subdued percussive loop of Vishnu's Pond and
the theremin-ian nightmare Les Perdues, that harks back to the primordial
age of electronic music.
And finally the unlikely lieder, like Sea Of Vapours, a
witchy whisper of non-words over a rhythmic cello loop amid a
profusion of instrumental and non-instrumental sounds;
Yves's Eyes, in which the vocal part has been reduced to distant
galactic wails and whines and guttural drones;
and the eight-minute Seething Bay, a sort of nursery rhyme set against
a backdrop of fibrillating semi-industrial sounds.
The singing is always mesmerizing, despite being obviously under-utilized,
and the digital-acoustic soundscapes is never predictable.
There is a painstaking care in the way these tiny fragile psychological
emissions are configured.
Berlin Toy Bazaar (2012) documents a live performance with
pianist Steve Beresford and Richard Sanderson.
Here & Here & Here (2014)
documents a live improvation with a free-jazz combo (Michael Vlatkovich on trombone, Jeff Kaiser on trumpet, Scott Walton on bass and Rich West on drums).
FTS003 (2018) was a split album. Homler's side contains five brief
improvisations with soprano saxophonist Adrian Northover and guitarist
Dave Tucker.
The mini-album Deliquium in C (2019) contains
Deliquium in C, a 15-minute
loop of ominous wind, earthly rumble, and guttural chirping.
Luz Azul (2020)
compiles an unreleased 2008 collaboration
with percussionist Marcos Fernandes and keyboardist Robert Montoya of the collective
Trummerflora. Homler plays "pocket theremin, sample sticks, whistles, assorted dry and squeaky objects" besides singing.
Her immense talent as a creative vocalist is not fully represented in her discography.
