Working under the moniker Drekka since 1996, composer Michael Anderson has spent the last twenty-five years touring, traveling, and collaborating extensively; collecting memories and building a very personal archive of sound that dates back to the mid-1980's when he first became interested in the emerging industrial tape culture scene coming out of post-punk Europe and the DIY ethos it taught.

Anderson sculpts his ritualistic and cinematic ambient industrial soundscapes using self-made field recordings of everything from insects in the mountains outside Kathmandu to a washing machine in Reykjavik, from countless sketches and abandoned projects donated by friends, from hundreds of hours of multi-track live recordings of Drekka captured all around the world, from his own voice and various instruments and objects found around his house.

His work and performances touch on themes of silence, memory, and forgetfulness.  But rather than obscure himself, as is so often the effect of experimental music, Drekka functions as a direct line into Anderson's mind and his tenuous cache of memories.  These personal aspects and this fragility are clearly on display, rather than being obfuscated by poetic abstractions.

Drekka owes something to the soundscapes and non-linear impressionism of Cindytalk or COIL, the industrial gravity of Einstürzende Neubauten or Hafler Trio, and the cinematic collaborations of Edward Artemiev/Andrei Tarkovsky or Simon Fisher Turner/Derek Jarman.  But his work is singular, unique, and very personal.

While "haunting" and "hypnogogic" are words often used to describe experimental music and art, DREKKA unequivocally occupies and deals in those dark spaces which comprise the tenuous province of memory and dreams. Those are the real ghosts of time and sound.

Drekka has released a large body of work on labels such as Auris Apothecary, Dais, Fabrica, Morc, Silber, Somnimage, and Anderson's own label, Bluesanct.

Anderson has also recorded with and toured in the bands of Jessica Bailiff, Dylan Ettinger, In Gowan Ring, Lovesliescrushing, Annelies Monseré, Rivulets, Stone Breath, Timber Rattle, and Turn Pale.


drekka.bandcamp.com