Strangely, we get to hear little music from Sweden’s second city of Gothenburg, but judging from what I’ve just heard we need to put that to rights, pronto.
Anna Ran (Hansen) released her first album, ‘Desert Flower’, during those heady days of the pandemic in 2020 (don’t you miss them?), a little before NMC got going, so we can be excused having missed her. I hope.
‘Out of Silence’ is the second one and was released on 7th March on the interestingly named Puya raimondii label.
Anna said on Facebook that “ironically or fittingly, when the day is finally here to release ‘Out of Silence’, I have no words.” So I’ll try to find some.
Quite often, when I’m trying to locate a sample album track, which is our go-to strategy now, I find it hard to select one and often go for the one with the album’s title in it.
And I’ve done that here in a way but with the caveat that there was no need for me to plough through every track in detail. The album has class written through it, right from the off.
‘Silence’ is a seven and a half minute extravaganza, a powerful and highly impressive cinematic piece with a huge arrangement behind it.
Regular readers (I hope I still have some) will know that my party piece is to relate a piece of music to a cinematic experience if it justifies it and often a Sci-Fi one. In this case I considered parts of 2001 – A Space Odyssey in the deep space scenes; and Contact where astronaut Jodie Foster is seemingly reunited with her dead father on a planet of the star Vega.
But eventually I settled on what should have been the obvious one – The Martian, in which Matt Damon is marooned on Mars and has to create his own Earthlike environment in which to live while he awaits rescue years down the line.
‘Silence’ would have been perfect for multiple scenes in that film, including the climactic rescue and it is evident straight away that Anna can write impressive film scores even without knowing it.
Vocally, I can’t quite place her. I could go for the easy choice, which is Kate Bush, especially when Anna plaintively sings “don’t give up” which Kate did on Peter Gabriel’s song of that title of course. But everyone is Kate Bush, aren’t they?
Let’s just leave her as Anna Ran. She’ll be well known enough quite soon, trust me.
Don’t expect every track to be a copycat. While many contain expansive cinematic music somewhere within, there is also a ballad, a laid back smoochy concoction, music that could be coming out of a monastery or nunnery, and plenty of ethereal stuff, while the final track serves as an ‘outro;’ with the volume and power of an M83 production.
And for that reason, I’ll give you two sample tracks, the first and the last, Alpha and Omega, Yin and Yang:
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ANNARANmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anna_ran_music/
Album Musicians: Jonathan Albrektson Aaberg, Manuela Ferrão, Liv Fridén, Anna Ran Hansen, Elias Hällqvist, Filip Leyman, Emelie Molander, Maja Molander, Alma Möller, Ellen Pettersson, William Soovik
Photo credit: Nadim Elazzeh
