It’s been a busy year for Anna Lunoe. Recently moving to Los Angeles, her own “All Out” tour recently concluding, and touring alongside Kygo, I’m not quite sure if busy is the right word here. She’s worked with Disclosure, The Weekend, M.I.A., Lupe Fiasco, Atrak, and Diplo just to name a few artists that you may have heard of. Anna was gracious enough to give us a few minutes of her time after her set at the Pink Stage at HARD’s Day of the Dead festival last weekend. She’s smart, witty, and if you’ve been to one of her shows or have seen her perform live, you know that it’s a non-stop dance party. Disco balls included.
Many of the types of music that you’re doing right now are becoming more popular, such as deep house and nu disco. Are you afraid that as these genres become mainstream that there will be negative results?
I think that’s just part of art. As soon as something grabs the mainstream and becomes really popular, there will be a million copycats that everything becomes ordinary is not something that I can control and nobody can control. I always try to push myself a little further when I feel like something it catching on to everyone, and I’ll always try and go a bit to the left, but that’s all you can really do. By nature, when things become popular you don’t want to do it anymore because it doesn’t feel fresh anymore. Some artists just go for mainstream and think to themselves, this is what people want, so I’m going to do exactly that. There are ways to do it that is still creative, and those artists that do it in an incredible way. I’m not afraid of being accepted as mainstream, but I would hope that the work that I put out will be timeless.
You just finished your tour composed of about fifteen stops at some very chill and smaller venues around the country. What do you think you learned or what is something that you brought back from that experience?
What I learned is that people come to hear my songs now. To see the change from a year ago when I would sneak my songs in, whereas now they get the biggest reaction. This is a change that has only just happened that makes me so happy. It was a lot of fun to do my own tour, and at the same time touring with Kygo because with him it was at live venues with stages in front of two thousand people. Whereas my tour stops were about 500 people with sweating walls in low rooms in dark places. It was really fun to have those shows going on night to night to be able to flip switch and change it up. It was really fun.
Any preference between the two?
Not at all. I love it all. I really enjoy both. I wouldn’t give up one for the other.
You posted last weekend, ‘Takis and techno … aka The greatest saturday night of my life with @weareoliver’. Oliver has a lot of respect in the industry. What’s one artist that you’ve wanted to collaborate with, do vocals, or any kind of creative project with? Any at the top of your list?
This is a very common question that I get, but the thing is, is that I simply like it when someone wants to work with me. I love the challenge of coming to a creative balance with someone, because that’s essentially what DJing is. You get put into a room with a bunch of people are like, alright guys, what are we going to do, what are you in to, where can we find that common ground to put out something great, but also have a great time? The same is in the studio in that I like to see what someone thinks that we can do together. I try not to conceive it, I just let it happen.
You can tell the artist who want to stick with one thing, But others not so much, and it takes guts to put out something different these days. Artists like Jack Ü are putting out tracks that may sound strange at first, but it takes balls to do so, and most people appreciate the creativity that is put into them rather than the same old churned butter.
Totally. Using different sounds and taking it somewhere different. Society hates things if they’re too different, and hates them if they’re too the same. Half of the people are going to hate you if you do something totally left field, and the other half of the people are going to think it’s incredible. That’s why you should do what you want to do. If they like it, they like it. If they don’t, they don’t. But it’s important to remind people to challenge themselves and think, do I really like this? It’s not something that I was expecting, but maybe I do think it’s kind of cool. Make people think. Force them into some other space of their brain. Some things you hate at first, and then later on you think, I kind of love this song.
Some of the songs that you released last year included ‘I Met You’ and ‘Breathe’, but then this year you have songs such as ‘Don’t Miss’, ‘All Out’, and ‘Satisfaction’. It seems as though your song titles and lyrics have gone through a progression of an emotional journey that then has progressed into a self realization of, I’m gonna do whatever the f*ck I want. Was this purely something that happened by chance, or was it based on a person journey of yours?
I think it was based on a journey. I guess it was me taking more control and more ownership of it. I think that I will continue to evolve with song writing. “I Met You” was one of the first songs that I ever wrote. And this year my songs took a turn into something that you can grab hold of, something of a story. I think that this is part of my creative journey, letting go of things that have held me back and made me afraid of what I wanted to do. I think that the people that come to my shows and get it, they understand where my heads at which is that I didn’t get into this because of anything except for the music. I’m not interested in the scene or schmoozing. I’m all about finding a place where you feel safe for where you can let off steam and have your moment. Go somewhere with the music. That’s what I want for every person that comes to my shows. To be able to be completely loose for one night and forget everything.
Thanks so much to Anna for taking the time to talk to WRR about what’s going on with her, and all of her great input and inspiration for all readers, listeners, and fans. Check out Anna’s newest All Out EP here. If you want to hear some of Anna’s live sets, check out her Luney Tunes sets on Soundcloud below, recorded all over the world from her live sets for her fans.
Connect with Anna Lunoe:
https://www.facebook.com/annalunoe
https://twitter.com/ANNALUNOE
https://soundcloud.com/ANNA-LUNOE
http://open.spotify.com/artist/7d96RW5Vix23AiCHr3mf3D
http://www.annalunoe.com/
Fun Fact: Anna loves when her interviewer wears a kilt.
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