EMA

EMA is the solo performing name of Erika M. Anderson, an American singer and guitarist born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She develops a sound that draws on experimental music, indie, electronic and folk approaches, including freak folk and folk-noise elements.

Early work

Anderson moves from South Dakota to Los Angeles at 18 and first plays guitar with the folk-noise act Amps for Christ in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2004 she forms the psych-folk band Gowns with former Mae Shi member Ezra Buchla. Gowns releases three albums before disbanding in early 2010.

Solo recordings and projects

Anderson begins releasing solo material in 2010, including Little Sketches on Tape on Night People. Her single Grey Ship appears the following year and includes a 17-minute version of Robert Johnson’s “Kind Hearted Woman”. Her debut album, Past Life Martyred Saints, is released on Souterrain Transmissions and receives strong press attention, leading to headline tours in North America and Europe.

Her second full-length, The Future’s Void, is made with musician Leif Shackelford in Portland, Oregon and released on Matador Records. She extends the album’s ideas about virtual reality, consumerism and identity through I Wanna Destroy (Sacred Objects from Suburban Homes), an exhibition using Oculus Rift technology that shows at MoMA PS1 in New York and the Barbican in London.

Further collaborations

Anderson and Shackelford also create a score for the cyberbullying film #Horror. In 2017 she releases Exile in the Outer Ring with co-producer Jacob Portrait of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, a record concerned with nationalism, poverty and alienation in the U.S. Midwest.

Related groups

Other projects associated with Anderson include Gowns, Thrash Palace and Lonesome Whistle Blows.