Photo: Bandcamp
Reflecting on a recent show where he conducted for the first time, Eli Goldberg says he decided “that would be the end of that, for a little bit”.
The 25-year-old musician behind the Ann Annie project is self-taught, (aside from six months of piano lessons, and three at music college before dropping out), and has been setting himself new musical challenges for the past few years.
For the same show, he wrote orchestration for a nine-piece ensemble, and on his new album, The Wind, taught himself to play cello, clarinet, and pedal steel guitar.
The collection continues on from the last Ann Annie release By Morning with its hybrid of instrumental folk and ambient music, this time introducing elements of neo-classical into its rich arrangements.
“I figured out how to simulate the sound of an orchestra by recording myself playing the same part [on cello] 25 times, and then going to a different place in the room, and playing on a different string, and EQing that to be in the range of a violin, and so on.
“Some of these pieces have up to 200 tracks of audio.”
That recording took place at Goldberg’s home, using an analogue reel-to-reel tape machine. The device’s inherent warmth and hiss provide a big part of By Morning and The Wind’s woozy charm, and Goldberg also used it to create new effects.
“I’ll sometimes crunch up the tape a lot. You can hear the folds going through the heads of the tape machine.”
Ann Annie compositions merge these older instruments and equipment with more modern ones, still incorporating the modular synthesis that was a large part of the project’s first five years.
During that period, Goldberg would post clips to Youtube of his synth setup somewhere in the wilderness, backdropped by tranquil scenery. His Bandcamp bio still simply says “a beautiful landscape”.
“I started making this music because I felt so stressed out by the world sometimes. Making super sweet ambient music that was nice to listen to while going to sleep was how I started.”
Initially the tracks were mostly synth-based, but as Goldberg’s ambition swelled so too did the arrangements.
“Being able to express emotion in that way, very physically, while also making sound that I think sounds beautiful, is a really exciting experience.
“It’s like the experience of hearing a really beautiful score in a film. Like a full body experience, especially if you’re in a theatre, physically feeling the sound waves.”
Goldberg wrote about his affinity for film and game scores in Atwood magazine, where he credits them, and the accompanying “fantastical and epic stories” as helping him process his feelings as a Filipino adopted into a white family.
“It’s hard to relate [those feelings] to other people, and to the world, sometimes.
“I’ve found what I love about the fantasy part of that, and been able to take it into my real life.
“I’ve had many moments, as I progress down this path of music, of fulfilment. Feeling that same feeling that I have listening to music scores in films, but being the one creating it, and creating that feeling and experience with other people.
“Hearing string sections and wind sections play my music, while I play piano, onstage for people, is definitely something that I never thought would be a possibility, but is extremely cool.
“It’s something I’ve always dreamed of.”
