EXILE IN THE OUTER RING
THE FUTURE'S VOID // PAST LIFE MARTYRED SAINTS
:the future's void:
NPR: “A sonic alternative universe... it blends the digital and analog in uncanny ways that unsettle any one interpretation.”
PITCHFORK: “Satellites” Best New Track
PITCHFORK: On St. Vincent, EMA, and Being a Woman on the Internet - Feature
THE SUNDAY TIMES: “…it’s a musical tour de force.” – Album of the Week
ROLLING STONE: “Anderson's excellent second album builds on the start confessional style of her debut she has a sinister charisma.”
STEREOGUM: "For an album so full of ambient terror and bad faith and dread, though, The Future’s Void is a nourishing experience, an album that will feed your soul if you let it...no computer, try as it might, could ever drown the humanity of a voice like that." - Album Of The Week
NEW YORK TIMES: “Its distorted guitars and hypnotic swirls of feedback dive ambitiously into other genres.”
NEW YORKER: “The Future’s Void is populated by drum machines, but nothing in the digital grid constrains Anderson’s ability to retain the unkempt quality of improvisation. The album is a delight, because it exhibits so few pretensions and has so many raw ideas flying through it.”
FLAVORWIRE: “As far as rock stars go (and let’s be honest: Erika M. Anderson is a rock star), you’d be hard-pressed to find a more affable or engaging presence.”
THE GUARDIAN UK: Album of the Week
UNDER THE RADAR: “An album exemplified by her singular, sometimes subversive songwriting, which rattles your consciousness like an exposed nerve, and can leave its stirring images scrawled on the insides of your eyelids. This record feels even more pinpoint-focused than her first—perhaps thanks to its recurring themes—and the shaking, distorting sounds she's wrapped around her voice are as beautifully unsettling as her words.”
NOISEY: "Fear not, the confessional nature of Anderson’s lyrics and the power of her music has not faded one bit."
FINANCIAL TIMES: "With songs switching between digitised industrial brutality and soothing lullabies, her voice going from languorous murmurs to PJ Harvey-style howls, Anderson depicts the alienating effects of technology, its bewitchment over her generation of millennials."
SPIN: “EMA has crafted a wide-eyed, open-eared, reasonably horrified, digi-noise drone-folk treatise about the soul-sucking, privacy-wrecking qualities of online life.”
ABC NEWS : "A stunning record that almost dares the pop world to accept these very challenging sets of sounds....Should this album get airplay? Absolutely!"
LOUD & QUIET: “Irrepressibly urgent” – Album of the Week
MOJO: “A new millennium classic” - Album of the Week
UNCUT: “Raw and human”
NME: “Her most outward-looking work to date. Both a slab of noise a deftly melodic pop… if the future’s void, the present sounds mighty’
MOTHER JONES: “Stunning... a thrilling sonic firestorm that defies simple categories.”
YAHOO MUSIC: "Erika M. Anderson’s new album is bursting with intelligence, emotion, paranoia about personal privacy, and the always-hip references to Cthulu. Though it’s by no means easy listening, the arrangements are fascinating, the sonics adventurous, and the subject matter of the songs uniformly striking. EMA’s future, despite the album title, is so bright she’s gotta wear one very large shade."
DROWNED IN SOUND: “All kinds of awesome”
AV CLUB:"Anderson cloaks raw emotions and loaded commentary in a sardonic package, but her sometimes blasé disposition shouldn’t be mistaken for detachment. For an album born of such hermetic origins, The Future’s Void resonates with deep concern over the state of the world."
FLAVORWIRE: “Flase Flag”: “Well, Here’s the 21st-Century Protest Song You’ve Been Asking For”
:past life martyred saints:
NYLON: “Past Life Martyred Saints is an epic adventure with impossibly lush, noisy guitars layered carefully under hypnotic melodies.”
PITCHFORK: “When Anderson led the California drone-folk band Gowns, she was a force of nature live. And if anything, she's only more of an emotional powerhouse now, wailing and whispering and crying like she's exorcising her own demons. She’s a wonder to behold”
SPIN: “Her harrowing, emotionally raw sound will stop your heart. One of the year’s most important artists” #3 Album of the Year
PITCHFORK: “Past Life Martyred Saints is a fiercely individual record, made by a musician with a fearless and courageous approach to her art.” Best New Music
ROLLING STONE: “Spellbinding Noise-Folk Confessionals”
POPMATTERS: “EMA’s work is simultaneously some of the most interesting I’ve heard in years, and jaggedly alive…”
UNDER THE RADAR: “…an intimately haunting and stirring record…”
PORTLAND MERCURY: “Anderson's debut album, Past Life Martyred Saints, is absolutely striking, a damaging and powerful piece of music…”
SUNDAY TIMES: “Phenomenal debut album” 5/5 Album of the Week / Alternative Album of the Year
UNCUT: “Blending roughness with beauty could be said to be EMA’s thing” Debut Album of the Month
MOJO: “Deliriously woozy thrill-ride”
TIME OUT: “She’s already sailed miles past the ‘bright hope’ stage and is well on her way to lo-fi legend”
THE FLY: “Dark, devilish and utterly intriguing, this is an album to lose yourself in”
THE SUN: “Masterful handling of each of the nine tracks makes this a truly one-off debut”
THE INDEPENDENT: “EMA’s raw power serves heartening evidence of a tough, fearless talent”
LOUD & QUIET: 9/10
NME: “A whole heap of Americana awesome”