As we approach the release of her latest album, LEV, we had the fantastic privilege to chat with contemporary-folk/electronic rising star ‘Anna Westin’ about her latest teaser track ‘Incense Ascending’…
SS: How would you describe your songwriting process?
It varies. Usually it starts with thinking through something – a situation, a fragment of an experience. It’s a process of turning it over, holding it up to the light, trying to figure out how it connects together – writing out the connections of the pieces that comprise the experience, crafting a story out of a little piece of something that has stuck in me, made me listen a bit closer. Usually the music follows the words for me, but not always.
SS: How has this process evolved over time?
Yes, I think it has. Mostly in the openness to trusting that there is something to be found, or crafted. And holding the ‘technique’ lightly. Technique should really just follow and enable the story.
SS: Do you take songwriting inspiration from anyone in particular?
I lecture in philosophy and ethics, so sometimes there will be ideas from that which I want to explore gently, and where academic thought defends and argues, music can uncover, explore, and let something unfold gently. Otherwise songs can come from conversations with friends a lot of the time, something someone has said that sticks and makes me see an experience differently. Or poetry. I wrote a whole song on a word from Denise Levertov’s poem (unborn words).
SS: What is the hardest thing about songwriting to you?
I think it’s the self doubt and getting in ruts with chord patterns and what I am writing about. That’s why I think just creating out of myself is pretty limited – writing has to take me out into the world.
SS: Do you have any remedies for a creative writing block
Haha, I don’t know if it’s a great remedy, but for me it’s mostly to not stress about it. To get into something juicy, like writing about an experience that is particularly recent, especially beautiful or raw, and just seeing what comes. Being ok with throwing stuff out. At the moment I’ve started writing things in a notebook. Then if the piece is good enough, I’ll rework it on the computer. But the penned step feels more permissive than typing (or maybe just a bit more Wendell Berry).
SS: What can you tell us about the process of writing your new single Incense Ascending?
I wrote this song in Margate, when I was trying to get to sleep and my neighbours were having a fight. It was one in a string of months of nights like that. I could hear everything through the ceiling, and there was a lot of shouting and bottles and sometimes the police would raid the flat. But I got to know the neighbour and I realised that it was more complicated – that the annoyance I got at not sleeping was a result of a whole lot of complicated layers of homelessness, violence and humour.
I loved my neighbour, and I also couldn’t understand him. The house itself felt like it was holding our complicated and different lives in its walls, holding us on its floors. This song was my attempt to listen and offer a kind of clumsy blessing of the house holding all of us and our complications. I then sang it when I was in Palestine at the dividing wall in Bethlehem, because I felt like the wall itself held all of the pain and beauty of the place too. Something like that.
SS: What are the main themes that are portrayed on that track? Both lyrically and emotionally.
Oh interesting question! I think it’s that when offering up our pain, it can become like incense rising, like prayers at a common altar.
SS: How does the new track compare to the previous two in your view?
It is different in that it is more of a concept than a story. Bright Burning Mess is more of a story; this is an exploration of an aspect of the experience of listening and responding to pain.
In terms of the production, it was done very differently to the other two tracks. Because of the ideas in the song, we wanted to incorporate something ancient. That is really what it is about, that ancient human lament. When we recorded it, Imogen, Ellie and I sang in a round around a single microphone, in a wide room at Resort Studios, a great arts collective in Margate that I was a part of. We sang it like you would sing Gregorian chant, We got up at dawn to record it, to avoid the roadworks outside.
The samples we recorded on our walks through Margate, the park, the sea, keys we found in our pockets. One of my favourite parts of the song is the sampling that we added to it – that somehow the lament was also connected to the kids laughing in the park, and getting out your keys to drive to work, and shuffling down the beach at dawn. Then we had the addition of other wonderful musicians: Tom Ward on bass, Rob Pemberton on percussion, and Marcus Hamblett mixed the track. Ellie Mason produced it and wove in the electric guitar and synths, Imogen also did production and played the Rhodes and piano. It was a lot of fun!
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