[NEW YORK, JANUARY 2024] Nulu Music label boss, singer, DJ and artistic visionary Anané drops her hotly anticipated ‘Take A Ride’ EP exclusively on Nervous Records, January 12th 2024.
DOWNLOAD | STREAM ‘TAKE A RIDE’
WATCH THE OFFICIAL ‘HIGH’ VIDEO
Produced by Two Soul Fusion, aka Louie Vega and Josh Milan, the mini-album contains six tracks, all with live string arrangements courtesy of the Apple Hill String Quartet and conducted by Leroy Burgess. The recording dives from the effortless heights of Punk Disco (Let Me Be Your Fantasy, High, Anané’s Punk Disco Demo) into the swirling eddies of Jazz Funk (Coffy Is The Color) before climbing back out into the languorous arms of Italo-Disco (Tutto Previsto) and Anane’s Punk Disco Demo.
The EP is held together in its entirety by the dreamy, sumptuous vocal of its creator Anané, who considers her top line one vital part of the instrumental whole. “I am art,” Anané reflects carefully, “for I am the music as much as I am the singer. Creation means to crawl into the unseen of my own dreams and becoming the beast of my vision, singing to the world as I go by.”
Opening singles Let Me Be Your Fantasy and High both tap into the lifeblood of classic punk disco – when rock, punk and disco merged in the early 80s to create the seminal NYC sound – chugging bass lines and tempestuous high hats providing the DNA for both cuts. On Let Me Be Your Fantasy Vega and Milan employ a dizzying array of tumbling, soaring string sections that dance across rivers of percussion and bass, Anané’s vocal swirling effortlessly above it all. High starts in similar fashion, Anané pulling the listener into the dance from the moment the needle drops, the chugging bassline catching her wind as the single begins to gather momentum. In both tracks it’s all about the movement, a thrilling, heady sense of dynamism and rhythm that grows with each song as they relax into their natural groove.
From disco Anané coaxes us down into the freewheeling depths of jazz funk with the single Coffy Is The Color. At nine minutes long this is an indulgent masterpiece, a carefully controlled riot, expertly orchestrated so that it builds and grows in energy and pace bar on bar. Anané is the central riff underpinning everything, her voice the steadfast constant within the experiment, various instruments tumbling, diving, rising and swirling around her, adding in volume and excitement until the listener is swimming in whirling electronic and acoustic waters. For any audiophile, Coffy Is The Color is as luxurious an experience as it gets.
Sensual, languid, practically slinking its way out of the speakers and across the terrazzo is Italo-Disco single ‘Tutto Previsto’. A homage to Anané’s love of Italy, the single embodies the unhurried, lazy heat of the Mediterranean. Slow basslines and sliding guitars that have an almost Cajun feel to them provide the song’s foundation, while strings shimmer and dance across the top. Between the two, prowling with an almost feline nature, is Anané’s simmering vocal.
Michael Gray’s Dub Mix of Get On The Funk Train brings the EP full circle back into disco, chunky, squelching rhythms rubbing up against undulating organs, insistent percussion and glistening strings. Paying homage to the original production of Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, it showcases the truly timeless nature of the genre, a legacy only added to by Anané’s latest body of work.
Topping off the EP is experimental Punk Disco instrumental edit Anané’s Disco Punk Demo. Delicate fluctuations of Latin guitar strum breathlessly across an endless soundscape of high-hats and barely-there bass. It’s a whispering, flawless cut that allows the EP to end on a timeless, ethereal, other-worldly note.
Take A Ride is a typically daring outing from Anané, who has for her entire career as musician, writer, singer, DJ and label boss, forged her own path. “My role as an artist has a higher purpose,” she explains, “not only my own personal expression but inspiring, creating, and possibly moulding the world around me. Understanding this sense of power. That I have within comes with great responsibility and understanding that my music will always be more than what I could ever imagine.”
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ANANÉ’S STORY
What is the dance floor? For so many of us, it’s both home and escape, refuge and release. For Anané, it was the first place she felt fully free to express herself, through movement and through music. The club is her church, the booth her pulpit, places to share her voice through the sounds of house, disco, R&B, hip hop, world music and more. In a career that has spanned almost quarter of a century her influence is deep, and her body of work as a DJ, producer, singer, artist, curator and label owner has had widespread impact throughout the music industry.
Hers is a story that starts in the midst of seismic upheaval. Born on the West African island of Cape Verde, Anané’s early world was turned upside down as Anti-Portuguese sentiment reached an all-time high, the island lurching towards independence from its colonial past. With her Portuguese father facing multiple death threats, the family were forced into exile. Uprooted, ripped away from everything that was familiar, Anané fled first to Portugal, before crossing the Atlantic to make a new home in Rhode Island, America.
Growing up multi-racial in 80s America, the young Anané had a keen sense of not fitting in. Music was her solace. Writing, listening to, and searching it out, she began to gravitate towards the underground rave scene; local warehouse parties, illegal raves, then the gay clubs and ballrooms, where house music was exploding. Here, in a community historically pushed onto the outskirts, Anané finally felt a sense of belonging.
Anané also began modelling and entering beauty pageants. “That was one of the first places I found my voice,” she recalls. “Models didn’t have a voice, we just got told what to do, but at the beauty pageants contestants got asked questions, asked for their opinions, and I suddenly realised, I have things to say!” Yet for all the beauty on stage, the pageants would be the first place Anané experienced the ugly face of blatant racism. After she won the coveted Miss Portugal crown, her moment of pride was tainted as the mothers of her competitors surrounded the judges, protesting that Anané was Black, and not “full blood Portuguese”.
With a one-way ticket and $150, Anané left. She followed the music to New York City, where she signed to Click Model Management, immediately finding work shooting campaigns for major brands like Revlon and Macy’s. Studying theatre and dance, she also began performing in music videos, including Byron Stingily’s seminal Nervous Records’ cut ‘Get Up Everybody’ and the Redman and Keith Murray (Def Squad) hip-hop cut ‘Rapper’s Delight’. But the pull of the dance floor was unshakeable, and even with her punishing work schedule waiting tables by night, Anané immersed herself in the legendary club scene of 90’s New York. Tunnel, Nells, Mars, Save The Robots, Junkyard, Jackie 60s, CbGb’s, and Sound Factory Bar, they became respite from the relentless grind of the real world. The castings, the shoots, the filming; in the clubs, under the lights, she filled her cup with positive vibes as she dared to dream big.
It was also in NYC where Anané met future husband Louie Vega. Along with Louie, Josh Milan, Axel Tosca, Luisito Quintero and Carlos Quintero, she performed as GRAMMY-winning band Elements of Life. Their blend of house-infused jazz, funk, world, and soul music saw them take to major stages around the world, including WOMAD and the Montreux Jazz Festival. Anané was one of three featured artists to record across a trilogy of Elements of Life albums: ‘Elements of Life’, ‘Elements of Life Extensions’, and ‘Elements of Life Eclipse’. She secured her status as a solo performer with debut artist album ‘Ananésworld’, dropping club anthems ‘Shake It’, ‘Walking On Thin Ice’, ‘Bem Ma Mi’, and ‘One Dream’, which she performed to a global TV audience of over 175 million viewers at the Super Bowl Pre-Game Show at the invitation of Cirque du Soleil.
Around that time Anané started frequenting SubMercer, the speakeasy-style VIP club with a capacity of just 75 that lay beneath the Mercer Hotel. Asked one evening by then-manager and friend Stephane Vacher to get behind the decks, Anané took up the invitation. For years she had collected music purely for the love of it; now she bought her extensive, eclectic selection to the fore, taking hold of the crowd for what would be an epic six hour set. Bitten by the bug, and offered a monthly ‘AnanéSelections’ residency, Anané turned SubMercer into one of the hottest tickets in the city, the likes of Kanye West and Erykah Badu among those to grace her tiny, packed dance floor. Setting up decks in the corner of her office, Anané set to work, head down, determined to learn her craft her way.
It paid off. Six months after her SubMercer debut Anané played the Vega Party at Miami WMC, where her sound captivated visiting European agents. That summer she headed to Europe for the very first time. “It’s where I really fell in love with DJing,” she says. “It’s an extension of being an artist, of being a creative, using the music to take the dance floor on a journey with me.”
Anané’s DJ style is a world away from the heady, New York disco and house of her vocal discography. Listen, and there’s a clear line back to her West African heritage: pulsing rhythms, tribal beats, African chants. She was a full decade and a half ahead of the impending Afro Beat and Afro House wave that would eventually envelope the world at large. As she pushed Afro music in her sets, producers began to flood her inbox with music promos, recognising in her work someone championing their sounds. With a sharp ear easily able to pick up on emerging and future trends the birth of Nulu Music in 2009 was a natural progression for Anané, building a platform to give artists a voice, somewhere they could speak and be heard. The likes of Black Motion, Djeff, Manoo, Rancido, Pablo Fierro, DaCapo, AM Roots, Brazilian Soul Crew, DJ X-Trio and more had their early works elevated by Nulu Music and its sister label Nulu Electronic. Pioneered by Anané, supported by Louie, feeding through to their peers, the sound began to spread.
“You know, platforms like Beatport and Traxsource didn’t even have the right genres for our releases back then,” Anané points out. “Everything got lumped in the ‘soulful’ genre. I think the only platform that had an Afro-centric genre back then was Afrodesia. But there we were, this little label pushing the Afro sound to the wider world.”
It speaks volumes to the character of Anané, the fierce, independent spirit that keeps her resolutely on track with music that feels right for her bones. It is, after all, the music of her home, her birth, the music of her roots. Thousands of miles away, across cold waters, the love of Cape Verde still sings out from her label, just as the disco and house of her new home emanates, shimmering, from her vocal productions.
As Anané’s influence is felt in set lists and on radio airwaves, her touch has been equally as instrumental on the dance floor and once again, spans both sides of the Atlantic. On America’s East Coast, showcasing the musical stylings of both Nulu Music and Nulu Electronic, Anané runs her Nulu Movement residency at NYC’s LeBain, now in its seventh year. In the warmer waters of the Mediterranean, Anané collaborates with husband Louie for The Ritual with Anané and Louie Vega. Eleven years since its conception, the couple have taken their celebrated party to Europe’s hottest destination venues, in Mykonos, Ibiza, where it now resides at the decadent, sumptuous Club Chinois, and Italy. Her profile in Italy in particular is one of instant recognisability, highlighted in 2016 when she was chosen by WYCON Cosmetics to be the first face of their ‘WYCONIC Collection’, producing a capsule cosmetic range called ‘WYCONIC Anané which featured on the pages of Vogue, ELLE, Cosmopolitan and Glamour.
Anané’s story continues to write itself. On the verge of another new chapter with the release of her ‘Take A Ride’ EP, a collaboration with Nervous Records and produced by Two Soul Fusion aka Louie Vega and Josh Milan, Anané adds yet another feather to her cap. Having always been in control of her own styling and creative direction, she makes her directorial debut alongside Julian Lazaro with the music video for EP single ‘High’, due for worldwide release November 2023. Pure Studio 54 vibes, the video sees Anané dive back into the shimmering, sparkling world of NYC nightlife, just as much her home as the African rhythms of Nulu Music.
That is, ultimately, the story of Anané. Standing astride two cultures, pulling the soul from each one and spinning it into a musical thread to weave her own intricate tapestry, Anané continues to forge what is a truly unique, remarkable, and singular narrative that dances across the landscape of music.