Name: Erika Angell
Occupation: Vocalist, musician, composer, producer
Nationality: Swedish
Current release: Erika Angell's The Obsession With Her Voice is out via Constellation March 8th 2024.
Pure vocal music recommendations: Dolmen Music - Meredith Monk. There’s some other instruments in there too though.

If you enjoyed this Erika Angell interview and would like to know more about her work, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram.



Do you think that some of your earliest musical experiences planted a seed for your interest in your voice and singing? How and when did you start singing?

My first idol was Nina Hagen, and the record is called 'Unbehagen.' The album cover both scared and intrigued my three-year-old self, and her wild and unleashed voice felt like unreserved freedom to me.



That energy is still something I channel in my music, as in 'German Singer,' for example, or 'One' from my new album.

I was always singing in the woods as a child; later on, I joined one of my mother's children's choirs and continued from there.

If you're also playing other instruments, how does the expressive potential of these compare to your own voice?

The voice is my instrument, but it is also who I am. I can’t imagine an instrument that is more personal, intuitive, and directly connected to every emotion and mood. I love the voice for that reason; singing is like checking in with your body every day, ever-changing with age and bringing on new challenges and qualities throughout. Through my voice, I speak my heart in music.

When I use other instruments, they are often tools for composing or a vehicle that carries the voice, like the arpeggiated synth in “Dress Of Stillness.”

I have never been able to come anywhere close in technical skill on an instrument to even compare it to what it’s like to express myself through singing.

Singing is an integral part of all cultures, and traditions. Which of these do you draw from – and why?

In Sweden, we sing a lot. There is a giant choir culture, and there are tons of songs that accompany each holiday or cultural event. I guess I grew up learning all of these traditional songs, learning how to shape my voice with others, practicing listening, and expressing myself in a collective of voices.

The main experience was how music feels in the space between human beings and in one big unified voice.

What were some of the main challenges in your development as a singer/vocalist? Which practices, exercises, or experiences were most helpful in reaching your goals – were there also “harmful” ones?

I think the biggest challenge for me was to find out what kind of singer I am and wanted to be, to find 'my own voice.' I knew choir music, opera, musicals, rock, pop, and later on, jazz, free improv, and experimental music. For years, I thought that I had to choose a direction and expression.

However, when I realized that I didn’t have to choose, all my influences just became a large toolbox for expressing myself. I worked a lot with free improvisation to develop my singing, exploring every sound in my body.

'The Obsession With Her Voice' is all about those explorations and voice discoveries, letting the body and voice take me where they intuitively want to go, as in the track 'Good & Bad.'

How do you see the relationship between harmony, rhythm and melody? Do you feel that honing your sense of rhythm and groove has an effect on your singing skills?

Absolutely, any technical skill brings new possibilities in how elaborately and freely you can express yourself. I always let my longing to express myself guide my learning and development.

Each new musical project comes with new challenges and things to learn. One challenge for this project was that I wanted to explore singing free and harmonically unexpected melodies, like how you do in a jazz solo, onto a more pop format chord change, listen too “Never Tried To Run.”

What are the things you hear in a voice when listening to a vocalist? What moves you in the voices of other singers?

That it feels true. For me to be moved by a singer, it has to feel honest and sincere, with a connection between voice and heart, and an ability to be completely vulnerable, free and powerful.

Then there are voices that have some kind of tone quality that just resonates with me; a voice like that is Robert Wyatt, for example.



How would you describe the physical sensation of singing? [Where do you feel the voice, do you have a visual sensation/representation, is there a sense of release or tension etc …]

Singing to me is to allow myself to be everything that I can be in one single moment.

When that happens (which is usually just a few moments here and there) singing has the same feeling as light or the ocean.

What kind of musical settings and situations do you think are ideal for your own voice?

Good sound usually. I like all the other variables of performance settings to constantly change.

We have a speaking voice and a singing voice. Do these feel like they are natural extensions of each other, ends on a spectrum or different in kind?

I feel like all sounds we use in singing are prolonged human vocal sounds or speech. I always go back to the speech, shout, cry etc. to find the right tone or placement to create a sound.

From whispers to screams, from different colours to dynamics, what are the potentials and limits of your voice? How much of your vocal performance can and do you want to control?

I’ve explored my voice in so many ways throughout my life and depending on what I’m working on the voice becomes stronger in certain areas in certain periods.

I think it’s important to accept and love the voice you’ve been given. If you try to sound like someone else you will usually hurt yourself, but once you accept your own voice you can do pretty much whatever you want with some practice.

I never think that I would want to control my vocal performance, I just want to feel as free as I can vocally to allow anything to happen.

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound “good” or “right” to sing certain words? What's your perspective in this regard of singing someone else's songs versus your own?

I love poetry and text in songs. I often write everything I want to sing before composing and when I then start singing the words they usually find their natural place in a piece. Textures and tones in language are everything. How we say/sing something.

It’s always more direct to sing your own words, but sometimes someone else’s poetry just hits home. Like Rilke’s poem that I use in “Dress Of Stillness” for example.



Strain is a particularly serious issue for many vocalists. How do you take care of your voice? Are the recipes or techniques to get a damaged voice back in shape?

In my experience a lot of professional singers have voice issues at some point in their career. Touring conditions are hard, bodyies and hormones are changing etc. The voice is sensitive to all of that.

Yes there are lots of ways to heal your voice, especially if you do something about it quickly. We need to treat our voices with love, like the rest of our bodies, rest and vocal exercises that relax and strengthen for example.

How has technology, such as autotune or effect processing, impacted singing? Has it been a concrete influence on your own approach?

I have not really thought about this since this type of singing / music usually doesn't interest me so much.

For recording engineers, the human voice remains a tricky element to capture. What, from your perspective, makes voices sound great on record and in a live setting?

To me this is all about taste and how you want to present yourself.

And I don’t think it’s so hard to capture a voice, a crappy mic can sometimes be the best. The challenge to me is more to capture the voice in the way you want to hear it.

Motherese may have been the origin of music, and singing is possibly the earliest form of musical expression, and culture in general. How connected is the human voice to your own sense of wellbeing, your creativity, and society as a whole?

My voice is my diary. It’s partly how I develop as a human being and as an artist.