Studio 52 is a community artist space located in the heart of Allston, and is proud to support the Boston music scene and local artist community.
The summer of Anjimile is upon us.
The Boston-based, Texas-born musician was named the Massachusetts winner of NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest, and as a result punched their ticket to perform live at WERS’ inaugural Wicked Good Festival on Boston Common. The free, all ages August 18 fest also features Bleachers, Buffalo Tom, Juliana Hatfield and Air Traffic Controller. Vanyaland is proud to be the official digital media sponsor of the festival.
Anjimile’s winning entry was titled “1978,” filmed at Cambridge co-working space Industry Lab and featuring Photocomfort’s Justine Bowe on an OP-1 synthesizer. The track is about Anjimile’s grandmother and was originally released on their 2016 EP Good Boy; watch the Tiny Desk Contest entry below. “I’ve heard a lot about [my grandmother] from my mom and how much of a special person she was,” Anjimile tells WBUR 90.9 FM, Boston’s NPR News Station. “I kind of view her in my life as a positive presence, like a guide that watches out for us — my family, and also me. So it’s a song of love and appreciation for her and her life.”
Anjimile — who uses the pronouns “they” and “them” — was selected by a panel of NPR-affiliated judges, who sifted through a significant number of entries in determining this year’s winner.
Before they play Wicked Good later this summer, Anjimile releases their new album Colors, with the release party that night at Industry Lab. It’s only appropriate that the LP is shown to the world in the place that helped it crystalize.
“Colors was written and recorded at Industry Lab, an eclectic co-working space in Cambridge, as the result of a 3-month artist residency,” Anjimile writes on Facebook. “Its sound is heavily inspired by the remarkably inventive group of engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists, graphic designers, programmers, architects and artists that inhabit the space.”
The album is described as “an experimental pop album that explores the various shades and luminosities of sound. Anjimile’s evocative lyricism and honey-smooth vocals shine brightly against an ever-shifting backdrop of spacious soundscapes and dynamic melodies.”
