Pogo Bar:
Anchoress
Cockdust
© Nina Wilkesmann
With their upcoming album Cockdust, Anchoress takes the audience on a journey to explore spaces beyond logic and imposed hierarchies. It is an invitation to embrace mystery in the material and disenchanted world we live in. Ancient hookers, exhausted knights, female hermits, lions, and witches are tearing down formerly male-dominated myths and start to follow their own agenda. Through her lyrics lead singer Anna Lucia Nissen channels these characters. Her writing process is influenced by feminist science fiction literature and her preoccupation with the position of the female body in a patriarchal society. Playing with the audience’s perspectives and expectations she uses a method of alternative storytelling, which anachronistically dips into and out of different histories, both imagined and real.
Anchoress fuses elements of avant-garde classical, liturgical grandeur and drone into hypnotic dirges that oscillate between hope and despair. Combining swelling organ tones, ritualistic guitar arpeggios and emotive percussion, their cinematically constructed sound conveys a sense of magic that coats the listener with an atmosphere of romantic doom and darkness.
Anchoress was formed in 2020 in Berlin, DE, and is comprised of Anna Lucia Nissen (Vocals/Keys), Alexander Rathbone (Guitar) and Tobias Textor (Drums/Keys).
In 2021 Anchoress participated in the Amplify Berlin residency program and received a scholarship from GVL Neustart Kultur 2021/2022. They were selected for the Pop-Kultur Talents 2022 and received a scholarship from Musikfonds for 2022/2023. The band presents their work in clubs, bars, and art spaces. They recently played at Arkaoda, 8mm Bar, Vorspiel Berlin and the BPA// Raum.
In 2020 their debut EP In Times Where Eyes Are Low was released. Currently, Anchoress is working on their first full length studio album titled Cockdust, which will be released in the winter of 2023.