Anna Domino

Anna Domino entered the world as Anne Taylor and spent her early years shifting between multiple countries and cities, having already called Tokyo—her birthplace—as well as Ann Arbor, Ottawa, and Florence home before she first gained notice for her music in early-eighties New York City. After appearing onstage with several different ensembles in that metropolis, she achieved her initial release through Belgium’s Le Disques du Crepsecule imprint, which issued the single Trust in Love in 1983. The next twelve months brought forth the East and West and Rythm EPs, after which Domino divided her residence between New York and Brussels, where she quietly cultivated a devoted audience among both listeners and fellow performers. Her debut long-player finally surfaced in 1986; the self-titled collection showcased her gift for understated yet danceable arrangements paired with lyrics that conveyed a subtle sense of unease, all wrapped in a polished, spirited sheen reminiscent of peak-era Everything but the Girl yet unmistakably her own. In 1987 she formed both a personal and creative alliance with Belgian musician Michel Delory, an association that produced the more eclectic follow-up This Time, an album that attracted significant interest in Japan even though her only subsequent U.S. appearances that decade were limited to a New York residency in 1988. Those performances yielded the Colouring in the Edge and the Outline EP, which returned to a predominantly electronic palette before being offset by the 1990 album Mysteries of America, a set whose acoustic textures contemplated the recurring patterns of life and mortality. After that release, Domino and Delory withdrew from active recording for an extended period, interrupted solely by the 1996 Canadian compilation Favorite Songs From the Twilight Years and the handful of live dates that accompanied it. By then the pair had already begun developing material under the Snakefarm moniker, reinterpreting the alt-country and murder-ballad traditions in their own manner. The resulting Songs From My Funeral appeared in 1999, yet several years passed without further output while the couple eventually relocated to the vicinity of Los Angeles. Fresh interest arose in 2004 when LTM initiated an extensive reissue campaign encompassing everything up through Mysteries of America and also prepared the retrospective compilation Dreamback.