EMA

Born in South Dakota, Erika M. Anderson, under the name EMA, develops a body of work in which noise rock, abrasive folk, post-industrial and alternative song intersect, with an approach that blends taut guitars, rough electronic textures, and a voice often placed front and center. Before her solo career, EMA participated in the American experimental scene with Gowns, a noise-folk band active in the late 2000s, whose album Red State appeared in 2007, and also played with Amps for Christ. She then launched her solo project with Little Sketches on Tape in 2010, and established herself more clearly with Past Life Martyred Saints in 2011, a record that fixes the contours of her universe, between raw confession, saturation and gaunt melodies. The sequence, from The Future’s Void in 2014 to Exile in the Outer Ring in 2017, sees EMA broaden her language toward a more industrial aesthetic and more directly linked to the social and cultural fractures of the United States. Having lived for a time in Portland, she also composed the soundtrack to #Horror in 2015 and joined in 2023 the trio Thrash Palace with Sarah Register and Vice Cooler.