Anika

Whether solo, fronting Exploded View or lending her voice to other projects, Anika’s crisp alto and dreamlike songcraft stand out immediately. Her 2010 debut album, cut alongside Geoff Barrow’s Beak>, set laconic takes on cult pop classics against spacious dub and frosty post-punk atmospheres. Through Exploded View she channeled both intimate and sociopolitical themes into hypnotic, free-flowing grooves on records such as the 2018 album Obey, while T.Raumschmiere and Tricky drew on her icy restraint for their joint work. Returning to solo work with 2021’s Change, she uncovered a more urgent, emotionally direct side of her sound.

Annika Henderson was born in Surrey, England, and divided her early years between Germany and England, absorbing her parents’ passion for music. While employed as a political journalist she crossed paths with producer Geoff Barrow, who sought a female singer for Beak>. They bonded over shared tastes in punk, dub and 1960s girl groups. Anika entered the studio with the group and, in twelve days without overdubs, they tracked nine songs that included a reading of Yoko Ono’s “Yang Yang.” Issued in October 2010, the resulting album Anika appeared on Barrow’s Invada label in Europe and on Stones Throw in the United States and Japan. The Anika EP, containing dub mixes of several debut tracks plus renditions of songs by the Crystals and Shocking Blue, followed in April 2013. The next year she guested on Camera’s album Remember I Was Carbon Dioxide. She also made her concert debut in Mexico, enlisting drummer-guitarist Martin Thulin, bassist-synthesist Hugo Quezada and synthesist-guitarist Hector Melgarejo. The musicians later coalesced as Exploded View and began writing together in late 2015. That same year Anika contributed to T.Raumschmiere’s Sleeping Pills and Habits. Exploded View’s self-titled first album emerged in August 2016; around the same time she recorded a version of Nena’s “99 Red Balloons” with the Invada Allstars for a nuclear-disarmament fundraiser. Slightly more than a year afterward Sacred Bones released the Summer Came Early EP, a set of fresh material and discarded takes that highlighted the band’s psychedelic leanings. Further collaborations followed, including work with Shackleton on Behind the Glass and vocals for Dave Clarke’s The Desecration of Desire, both in 2017. For Exploded View’s second album Obey the lineup had narrowed to the trio of Anika, Thulin and Quezada; the more considered, studio-polished record appeared in September 2018. A year later she featured on PBDY’s Careworm, then joined Tricky on his 20,20 EP and I Like Trains on Kompromat in 2020. Anika resumed her solo path with Change, recorded with Thulin in Berlin and issued in July 2021; the album emphasized stronger melodies and a heightened sense of immediacy. Change: The Remixes, featuring reinterpretations by Planningtorock and Lauren Flax among others, surfaced in 2022.