- For Ana Voog, the camera never blinks. While training her
creative eye on the world, the Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter/musician/performance
artist has similarly trained the eye of a video camera on herself.
Her website, entitled Anacam (anacam.com), is accessible 24-hours
a day to internet users worldwide. Invasion of her own privacy?
Not to Ana, who proclaims, "Privacy is in the mind."
Otherwise, curious voyeurs can also look for a healthy measure
of disclosure on Ana's debut Wasteland Records album, ANAVOOG.COM
? the first ever to be named for a website.
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- Produced by Prince and the Revolution drummer Bobby Z, ANAVOOG.COM
is a collection of provocative Voog originals (plus a cover of
Yoko Ono's flippant "Ask The Dragon"). The album, which
will actually make its world premiere on the internet, features
enhanced-CD capability for dual play on CD-ROM, featuring Ana
herself discussing her life, her music, and her eclectic tastes.
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- The album mirrors Ana's already world-renowned artistic daring.
Aided and abetted by keyboardist Dr. Fink (Prince and the Revolution),
Ana poured her heart and soul into the music on ANAVOOG.COM,
singing lead and backing vocals, and writing all but one song.
"This new album is all me," notes Ana, "and all
electronic keyboards, which is something I hadn't done before."
Like her hero, Yoko Ono, Ana tends to write elliptically, humorously,
and bare bones. "I experimented all through this album,"
she says, "just to see if I could do certain things."
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- That adventurous spirit is evident on songs like "Telepathic
You," the jazz- flavored "Backwards," and the
caustic "Please God," a irreverent (some might say
shocking) prayer for a divine lover and ammunition. "Hollywood"
is a searing censure of the surreal world of Hollywood, while
"Gone" is as close to a love song as Ana gets. "It's
dark and twisted," she says, "in an Edward Gorey kind
of way." Other tracks, like "Terrified," "Mother
Anorexia," and "I Was Waving At You," all display
Ana's range as a writer and singer, but no one song pins her
down. She exemplifies the best kind of artistic chameleon, musically
morphing her persona from track to track.
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- "I'm just so damn arty, somebody slap me!," laughs
Ana, curled up on a sofa in her Twin Cities anabode. It's a gallery
of esoterica: mannequins, owls, glass grapes, Hello Kitty paraphernalia,
antique dolls, vintage lingerie, dry cleaning tags, egg beaters,
books about the sex industry, assorted stuff from Yoko Ono and
Annie Sprinkle, fetish gear, candles, cobalt blue glass, and
78 r.p.m. records. Life for her is a constantly evolving art
project, and, like all true creative spirits, she was born, not
made, an artist.
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- The ice and snow of Minnesota may have kept her indoors a
lot while growing up, but nothing could cage her rebellious nature.
She was a gifted painter and from an early age, and a career
as a fine artist was hers for the taking. But fate ? and Adam
& The Ants ? intervened. "I saw them on TV one night,"
she remembers. "It was a total epiphany for me. I knew I
wanted to create music."
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- Among her many musical influences past and present, Ana cites
Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, David Bowie, Stereolab, the Orb, Bjork,
Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Ultravox, the Pretty Things, Roxy Music,
the Soft Boys, Kraftwerk, and Yoko Ono among her most important.
By age seventeen, she plucked up the nerve to start a band of
her own, The Blue Up?.
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- The Blue Up? released their last album, Spool Forka Dish,
on Columbia Records. Although the band had a strong regional
following, they chose to disband in 1995, and from then on Ana
devoted herself to her own solo music career and her growing
fascination with the internet as an art form. But before then,
Bobby Z had caught The Blue Up? At the famed Twin Cities club,
First Avenue, and was hooked. In late 1996, he introduced her
to an old friend, Radioactive Records/Wasteland Records head
Gary Kurfirst, who immediately recognized Ana's unique musical
and personal qualities. In short order a deal was cut, and Ana's
solo recording career was up and running.
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- Now, Ana's site, anacam.com draws millions of hits every
month, making it one of the most popular avant-garde sites on
the web. "It's a window into my house, into my life, with
a picture updated every few minutes showing what I'm doing right
now. I'm a weird girl, so be prepared for weird and strange things
to happen all of a sudden out of nowhere."
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- Meanwhile, Ana Voog is up for the rigors of promoting a new
album, or anything else that comes her way. "I never get
bored," she says, "with me there's always something
going on. I'm just really excited with all the possibilities
of combining my music with the constantly evolving internet."
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