Erika M. Anderson

Erika M. Anderson performs and records music under her initials as EMA.  She grew up in the dive bars and rotten graveyards of South Dakota.  Now she lives in Portland, OR and tries to do yoga and eat local but sometimes that shit just don’t work out.  She is only occasionally blonde.

@EMAthorstar

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Bio

EMA is the solo performing moniker of guitarist/vocalist Erika M. Anderson, who shaped her experimental voice and guitar techniques in two well-regarded underground bands before setting off on her own. Anderson, who moved to Los Angeles from South Dakota when she was 18, played guitar with folk-noise outfit Amps for Christ in the late '90s and early 2000s, then formed the psych-folk band Gowns in 2004 with former Mae Shi member Ezra Buchla. After making three albums, Gowns disbanded in early 2010, and Anderson began working on solo material that included that year's Night People release, Little Sketches on Tape. Her single Grey Ship arrived about a year later and boasted a 17-minute version of Robert Johnson's "Kind Hearted Woman" that managed to reinvent the song drastically while remaining true to its spirit. Her debut album, Past Life Martyred Saints, appeared on Souterrain Transmissions in mid-2011. It was widely praised in the music press and, despite minimal marketing, it led to headline tours across North America and Europe. The following year Anderson began work on her second full-length with musician Leif Shackelford in Portland, Oregon. Titled The Future's Void, it arrived via Matador Records in April 2014. She explored the album's concepts of virtual reality, consumerism, and identity further with I Wanna Destroy (Sacred Objects from Suburban Homes), an exhibit that incorporated Oculus Rift technology and showed at MoMA PS1 in New York and London's Barbican. Anderson and Shackelford's referential score to the cyberbullying film #Horror arrived at the end of 2015. Anderson worked with co-producer Jacob Portrait of Unknown Mortal Orchestra on 2017's Exile in the Outer Ring, an impression of nationalism, poverty, and alienation in the U.S. Midwest. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Talks

Erika M. Anderson (EMA) Talks Britney Spears’s Britney Jean

By Erika M. Anderson | December 18, 2013

Erika M. Anderson (EMA) Talks Britney Spears’s Britney Jean

At the end of some dark-hole internet night years ago I ended up watching a video of Britney Spears going through a McDonald's drive through.

Erika M. Anderson (EMA) Talks John Fogerty’s Wrote a Song for Everyone

By Erika M. Anderson | May 28, 2013

Erika M. Anderson (EMA) Talks John Fogerty’s Wrote a Song for Everyone

I have a thought in my head that I wrap around myself like a warm blanket whenever I am completely overwhelmed. No matter how bad things get, if...

Erika M. Anderson (EMA) Talks Anika’s Anika EP

By Erika M. Anderson | April 18, 2013

Erika M. Anderson (EMA) Talks Anika’s Anika EP

When I first came across a profile of Anika a coupla years ago on The Stool Pigeon I remember letting out a silent little internet gasp...