Enter Ana Caravelle (real name, Anahita Navab), a 22 year-old composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and lifetime Los Angeles resident. With her refreshingly genuine musical outlook, Ana takes the influence of her city environments and turns them into something completely different - lush, organic and melodic gardens for listeners to plant their ears into. Basic Climb, Ana’s up-coming debut album and the second full length release for Non Projects is a culmination of her first five years of classical harp training and sees her take musical flight with comprehensive and adroit songwriting and arranging skills. Produced by her beau Ryan York (also known as Asura) and recorded at Alpha Pup label head Daddy Kev’s studio The Echo Chamber, Basic Climb showcases Ana’s soulful harp playing and luxuriant voice matched with her rich instru
mental arrangements for voice, strings, winds and percussion.
Ana’s musical journey began with the piano at age 5, which inevitably led to more instrumental undertakings - harmonium, guitar, musical saw, glockenspiel, and most importantly harp and her own voice have since become standard partners in her musical ways. Alongside discovering new timbres and colors to work with in all off these varied tools, Ana cites influence in such assorted musical stalwarts as Nina Simone, Björk, Sigur Rós, Beirut, múm and lastly Joanna Newsom, with the latter strongly pushing Ana to go forth with her harp playing and arranging. While the songs featured in Basic Climb date back to over a year ago, the crux was written and arranged in her final undergraduate year at UCLA, where she recently earned a B.A. in Psychology, a core interest which inspires many of her multifaceted musical works. In addition to academic psychological studies affecting her works, Ana also draws inspiration from her own journal entries by turning static words on paper into flourishing and opulent vocal runs that resonate throughout listeners’ bodies.
Although surrounded by the inspiring figures of the current Los Angeles beat scene (Ana was featured on the track Timber on Asura’s stunning debut and has performed at Low End Theory alongside Ryan), Ana provides us with a very powerful foray into her own entirely acoustic musical world with Basic Climb, achieving a much sought-after grand intimacy with an unparalleled style of large-scale yet warm and inviting aural surroundings.
Basic Climb will be available Fall 2010 on the Non Projects label.
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