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CMU Approved
Approved: EMA (TGE Gig Previews 2011)
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 5 May 2011
In the run up to this year’s Great Escape, which takes place in venues across Brighton from 12-14 May, we’ll be previewing some of our favourite artists who are playing the festival this year.
And today it’s EMA, full name Erika M Anderson, who made the move from South Dakota to LA aged eighteen, making her first footsteps into the music world with alt-rockers Amps For Christ and releasing a 2007 album with drone-folk pairing Gowns before electing to go solo. Not doing things by halves, she set critics agog earlier this year with seven-minute album taster ‘The Grey Ship‘, followed by ‘California‘, which she describes as a “noised-out rap ballad”.
Released on 9 May through Souterrain Transmissions, EMA’s debut album ‘Past Life Martyred Saints’ incorporates her grassroots blues influences with a loose, instinctive songwriting style that’s all husky vocals and lapping tides of distortion. As well as gigs in London and Manchester next week, she’ll be appearing at The Great Escape on the NME Radar Stage at Horatio’s on Brighton Pier on 14 May, where fingers crossed she’ll also roll out her brilliant cover of Danzig’s ‘Soul On Fire‘.
To get into this show, plus all the other hundreds of panels, sessions, parties and gigs taking place at The Great Escape this year, get your delegates pass from escapegreat.com.
