Tom’s Essay by Suzanne Vega

"I was imagining it as a kind of French film soundtrack, something vaudevillian on piano, like a background to a Truffaut film. But I didn’t play piano and didn’t know anybody who did. So I kept it a cappella, and began to sing it this way in my live show. This detail, singing the song alone with no accompaniment, affected everything to come." Link

Pop Making Sense by David Byrne with Tony Peregrin

"Sultry New York siren Vanessa Daou has too many numbers that suit the atmosphere for a romantic night. Whether it is something with a smooth jazz vibe from Two to Tango; the works of Erica Jong set to a groove on her solo debut, Zipless; or the poetic temptation from her most recent outing Make You Love, this woman puts sexiness into everything she sings. Daou uses her cooing voice to buoy on the rhythm on numbers like Dear Anne Sexton and Cross That Bridge. A much-awaited new album is expected later this year per Daou's MySpace page." Link

Eastvillageradio Interview with Brion Vytlacil's Future Music

Anji Bee: Chillcast #127: Sensual Ladies

Anji Bee: Chillcast #127: Sensual Ladies

Artist's Statement

There are sounds, words, objects, subjects , gestures, and expressions that have a certain and intangible resonance. I find this quality in manifold things: in anything slow motion, a flickering bulb, in a Cracker Jack wrapper, the color chartreuse, in smoke rising. I suppose I am attracted to the notion of time, how it passes, how ideas are changed, interpreted, corrupted, when and which things go from from trash to artifact.

I'm interested in the aspects of desire which give urgency to the act of creation. I sometimes search for words in Google in order to find patterns and explore the poetics of similar and shared experiences. The word 'desire', for instance, yields phrases that reflect this unified experience: the Desire of Ages, the garden of Desire, crippled with desire, uncertain objects of desire, A Streetcar Named Desire, the new objects of our desire, the exploration of desire. I often compose poems with words from other languages known or unknown to me, or languages on the fringes of experience like Esperanto. I agree with Michael Gottleib here, "The old tools don't work anymore, at least for the time being."

Detachment from the physical aspects of reality is a consequence of technology, yet, remote and intangible uploads jar and jostle with the real lives of strangers. This juxtaposition, of public and private space, personal and universal, distant and up-close, resides at the heart of every web page. Despite its public accessibility, the internet provides the viewer with, at its core, true intimacy and immediacy of experience.

Before I write a song, it is often one word or thought that drives me: that thought might then become a drawing or a painting or a poem before it becomes a song. The mixing of media on the web says something to me about the clash or meeting between fields or layers of thought, creating alliances between things or making them acrimonious. My desire is to express something that engenders a feeling which is new, unfamiliar, untrodden, transcendent, sublime, unruly, private, passionate, fragile, exquisite.