ana hortillosa (guitar, vocals), and rotating friends including jason kleinberg (viola), trevor wencl (drums), anna maloney (cello, vocals), michael mahony (accordion, trumpet, vocals)
Sounds Like
2002 Urban Comfort EP
Acoustic guitar, toy accordion, & vocals
Recorded at Mr. Toads in San Francisco, CA with Jeff Byrd
2005 Pentimento
Acoustic guitar, drums, bass, violin, optigan, mellotron, vibes, fan, bucket, clave, rain, hail, cardboard box, piano, vocals
Recorded at Type Foundry in Portland, OR with Adam Selzer
THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY hugs the mountain side and blends to the main street of the town i grew up in. nestled off the southern california coast is the pier i spent many sunday afternoons, sometimes with a few pensive fishermen, many times just alone.
where does this music come from? ...seemed like all the neighbors' children played piano and so mom had me take some piano lessons too. the lessons weren't memorable and i forget why i stopped going early on. but i do recall the mariachi bands that roamed the old downtown area, at the time a stretch of one to two-story buildings and brick road about five or six blocks long. so i saved enough lunch money to buy a small second-hand serenada at the music shop. fifty dollars, or something.
dad drove me and my guitar twice a week in the evenings to the community college, where i took a flamenco guitar class...but dropped out half-way through. again, i forget why. time passed and i instead immersed myself in writing and poetry and resigned myself as a person void of musical inspiration. but one day i came home and my guitar was gone from my room. apparently, a friend of the family had borrowed it...well, since i wasn't playing it anyway. but when he returned it, i took that guitar to the pier and tried to teach myself alone...just to see if i could. all afternoon, mostly trying to recall those first guitar classes, some open chords, arpeggios. cold and so frustrated though, i almost just left her there.
instead, i brought it back home and it stayed with me like an ornament, a disappointment, much of the time a ghost i couldn't shake. but in time--maybe it was just a matter of time--i heard that music they call country blues; i heard some of that early swing; and i heard some kind of instrumental folk. it was still a few years before that guitar found a place in my hands, but in retrospect i guess things do somehow find a way. then words much easier to write in solitude started to make more sense sung...
i try to think about where this music comes from and right now i only see part of a highway on the pacific coast that hugs and bends around a mountain side. it passes through the town i grew up in, where there is a pier onto the ocean's edge, where i found my crossroad and where patiently i had waited for it to find me.
Tape Op, Matt Mair Lowry
She wakes you from your singer-songwriter daze with style. Infusing old blues influences...with pop harmonies and hooks, she exhibits a knack for penning interesting composition with a real sense of purpose.
Action Man Magazine
Anamude manages to infuse her songs with enough creativity and force to sidestep the acoustic trap...
Performer Mag , Kristen Schaer
The sum and the parts of PENTIMENTO, Anamude's newest album, are mutually beautiful and distinctive in their own right. Like Wilco's YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT, which utilized unconventional objects and noises to make one of 2002's seminal records, Ana Hortillosa (Anamude) creates a wonderful world of cohesive background noise through clacks, creaks, bumps, and thumps. Hortillosa understands the crafting of a pop song with an alt-country/bluegrass-y feel, revealing her skill as she builds these songs from the ground up, enriching them with her phenomenal guitar...
An album very rarely engages all the senses with all the peripheral and foreground noises--the instruments mimicking the sounds of the ocean, the feeling of a road trip, even the many shades of penitence--that are encapsulated so fluently in Anamude's PENTIMENTO.
Pennyblack Music (England)
...Thoughtful, provocative and demanding...
Delusions of Adequacy, Jeff March
San Francisco's Anamude has a unique approach to the singer/songwriter genre. The opening instrumental "A Dim-lit road" sets the stage for a release of quiet yet intimately moving acoustic-driven songs that are influenced by folk, pop, and even blues… For while Anamude's guitar and the rich instrumentation may be sweet at times, it's also a little off-kilter, with unique time changes and unusual flows. The result is often pretty, often unusually striking. And the artwork, as to be expected from the excellent KEEP Recordings, is just as pretty and striking. Truly a nice package.
hinah (France)
A thunderbolt!
Mote Magazine (Canada)
Within the stripped-down acoustic confines of guitar and voice, Hortillosa manages a ton of dynamics...
Matamore (France)
A gift of writing and guitar that takes us outside the beaten path...
Opus Zine
There's something particularly endearing about her music that sets it apart from the rest of the female singer/songwriter group...I can say confidently that I like Anamude
Babysue (on Urban Comfort EP)
Nice unpretentious sparse folk music from a young lady whose music speaks for itself...In the world of folk music there are far too many preachy artsy fartsy types. Ms. Hortillosa's music never falls into these ditches. In the course of six tunes, this enchanting artist will most likely find a solid place inside your itty bitty heart.
Almost Cool
There's just something about Anamude that elevates her...
hello there show @ the ghost town gallery in oakland friday night!! w/ silver pines (TX) damon and the heathens & dakota slim. May 23rd @ kimo's w/ fpodbpod in SF. -matt
hey you gotta see this website. it will tell you if anyone we go to school with has a crush on you. i have no clue how this thing works but trust me i just tried it and it did.
We would love for you to join our group, Green Housing /Building / Modern Design, where we post on green building, modern design, and… organic/natural farming. (Somehow, it works!)
i think i own one of your records and i think i love it. weird. were you at one of our shows in sf? is keep still putting out records? i remember i got a comp from them to ... panty lions were on it, maybe? do you know them?
