Together: Rosa Anschütz

Rosa Anschütz is a twenty-six-year-old singer-songwriter and artist based in Berlin, Germany. Seeking to transform daily observations and interrogations into hauntingly beautiful and crafted records, her poetic and sharp lyrics oscillate between singing and spoken words in distinctively emotionally driven combinations of electronic music and analog instruments. Her 2019 EP Rigid was followed by two albums, Votive and Goldener Strom.

Interior, to be released on the 2nd of November 2023, is Rosa Anschütz’s most introspective and vulnerable album to date; an insightful and powerfully crafted project which dives within but also turns to the outside. The record operates as a meditative sonic and lyrical journey across genres, with an analog dark-romanticism rooted in the melancholia of neo-folk, the elegance and solemness of modern classic and the grace and baroque of sacred music. 

For Speciwomen, Hugo Scheubel met with Rosa Anschütz to discuss her influences and thoughts as a musician, writer, and artist, and the courage she gathered to look within herself to then dare her listeners to look at what she is, at last, observing.

© Eva Luise Hoppe, 2023

Hugo Scheubel: Let’s go directly into the making of Interior. What was the intention behind the album, and how did it materialize?

Rosa Anschütz: It was not a linear process - as is the usual case. There were multiple starting points, and then a time to make decisions and to connect things. The initial start came from the wish to record an EP which would be based on choirs, so that the vocals would be enhanced. My producer [Jan Wagner] and I have constantly been working to leave a lot of space to the voice since we started working together. Yet, this time, we wanted to provide it with the biggest space it ever had. And as we started, Interior started to materialize.

HS: Why was a focus on the voice and the lyrics so important to you?

RA: I think it has to do with the wish to dwell more into the act of the ‘multiplication’ of the self. I'm always wishing to multiply myself - in every track. With echo, choirs, symbolism. In a normal song, you have instruments and a lot of percussion. You don’t even necessarily start with the voice, and there are limitations to the number of vocal aspects you can add, because the track would just be too full otherwise. To use the vocals as the basis, and to then complement and strengthen them with instruments and production was a new process for me. It suppressed a lot of boundaries. I recorded over 20 different tones, both high and low - I was, in other words, free to entirely act and play with my voice.

HS: How would you say Interior falls into the legacy of your two previous albums?

RA: Interior is a sentimental journey, with an analog focus. Almost everything that can be heard comes from my singing or an instrument. In comparison to what I’ve done in the past, there's almost nothing electronic in this album. This reinforces the vulnerability of the project. All the instruments [the traverse flute, the trumpet, and the organ] are ones I’ve been playing since I was a child. I approached this project as a musician – everything is composed. Much more composed than Votive and Goldener Strom. Because of that, I feel very close to Interior.  I can relate to it more.

HS: What was the decision behind that shift?

RA: It’s paramount for me to not make just one sound. Again, the idea of the multiplication of the self, of constantly seeking to expand what I know and do. I knew I wanted my new project to have an orchestral feeling to it. I also wished to open the space more – both in a lyrical and physical sense. In that sense, I’ve come to realize that what you put into the making of an album can also be what you can expect to receive from it. When I was producing electronic projects, I could expect to play in clubs or to play at festivals. With Interior, I wish for my music to take a more classical turn, and to potentially be used in opera or theater context. It is a kind of music which requires space.

HS: With such a focus on the lyrics, Interior also establishes you as a writer and a poet. I would like to know a bit more about your relationship to writing.

RA: A lot of my lyrics are based on the writing I do daily in my diary. I write like one would write a travel book, describing life as a journey. Looking at what comes at you, what you experience, what you notice in others, and finding the words to describe all of it. Most of my lyrics are based on things that happen to me. There lies the beauty of writing. I experience something emotional - which might have been hurtful or painful - and then I gather the ability to turn it into something that others can also relate to and hopefully understand. It’s a dual, almost ironical process: I have an urge to express myself, but I also don’t. I write about feelings deeply personal and close to me, and then I work on these words to turn them into relatable lyrics, welcoming of projections and identifications, so people don’t get too close. It’s a constant dance between vulnerability and agency.  

HS: And do you feel that there is a difference between the way you feel about the words you write and the words you sing?

RA: When I'm writing something, I'm always thinking about how it would, and will, sound. I write poems in the same clear and concise way I write music. I can always hear what I put onto the page – and listening is a way for me to choose the right words, the right images.

HS: You’ve created a sequin piece for each one of the eight tracks, and they are all part of a bigger curtain. Can you tell me about the intention behind this?

RA: My most important mean of expression is, evidently, music. Yet, I always need to have imagery coming alongside my tracks. I see it as a frame of mind - in the sense that the images I create speak of the mind. It is a mental imagery. It feels like translating the words and feelings I sing into tangible, concrete objects. I do this because every single one of my projects comes from the need to express something – and the imagery ensures that, once the work is complete, there is nothing left to say. I have expressed everything I wanted to express. Everything is here. Regarding the sequins, the curtain I made was used as the background for the album cover, and I plan to have it behind me on stage when I will perform.

HS: And there's a lot of symbols embedded within it.

RA: Of course. Some references are figurative, others more surreal. I really wanted to play with the notion of perspectives. When we go far, things appear smaller to us. If we go closer, they become more visible. It relates, again, to my childhood. I used to do sequins a lot as a child. I was doing that for a long time, also because it was something that made me feel very close to the thing I was creating - both figuratively and metaphorically, as I got my glasses pretty late and suffered from quite a severe diopter! The sequin is also representing shapes which can be reminders of contact lenses and that I have been wearing now for years. But more seriously, I also really enjoy going from one dot to another. When I start a sequin piece, I'm always just getting into it straight away without having any clear image of what the end result will be. What I am showing is therefore a sort of coincidental situation. It gives me a moment of deep relaxation and stress relief. It's a gesture that you're doing for hours; and every sequin is touched, added individually. So, to me, the sequin pieces are almost like a photo of someone sleeping. They are extremely vulnerable.

HS: In one of the songs, you ask the simple yet powerful question: “How much do you want from life?”. Considering what you’ve just explained about Interior, how would you say that this album reflects your current relationship to your life, to your reality, to others, to yourself?

RA: I am yearning for the unreal. It is both a wish to manifest myself and concretize the reality that I am in right now, and a wish to cast away somewhere else, to disappear or be someone else. I am learning to navigate these opposites. Over the past years, I experienced how out of my control things can be, how life has a way to come at you in ways you cannot expect. This is why the subjects I sing about in this album are all very close, very tied to my present circumstances. With Interior, I am dwelling into a greater, and perhaps also more critical, depiction of my lived reality. I am learning to let life happen, to stop trying to intervene on it so much. This album is where I am becoming more sincere and honest in my ways of letting things flow.

HS: To conclude, what do you wish for a listener to take from Interior? And parallelly, what have you taken from it?

RA: I hope this album will be the enhancer of one’s vulnerable thoughts. That’s what it did to me. It shaped my views on things a lot, made me reflect on the extensive amount of time that has passed and that is influencing everything around and within me. There’s a deep seriousness to all of it.