AnohniThe show started with a slow dancing Naomi Campbell, looping seamlessly in an empty warehouse with an electronic wave slowly building to guide her.
Anohni’s voice appeared before she did, and for most of the night her voice was heard while moving images of a variety of women mouthing along was projected onto the large screen behind her. The effect was haunting. Anohni’s voice has always been transcendent, but with each track a new face took it over and mouthed along in a tight angled close-up – sometimes an older Asian woman, other times a young Latina, and in between others of ages and stages of emotion.
The musical set was made up solely of tracks from Anohni’s new album, Hopelessness, providing a little letdown for fans wanting to hear existing favourites, but also allowing her to build a new narrative. Title track Hopelessness set the mood, while highlights included I Don’t Love You Anymore, Why Did You Separate Me From The Earth, Drone Bomb Me, Crisis and the subtly terrifying reserve of Execution.
As her voice echoed around the room, Anohni herself was a small dark figure on stage covered in a black hood and gauze mask, dancing gently at times and occasionally pausing to pant between sets and regroup. Throughout the set she remained in this character-state, never speaking at all often drawing her hood down further as if to create a cloak to protect her as her voice left her. The juxtaposition between this, the images and Oneohtrix’s alternative electro bed was sometimes confronting, but always interesting.
To end, Anohni simply knelt before the screen with her back to us as a video of Indigenous elder Nyarri Nyarri Morgan’s World Economic Forum address, “What are we doing to the earth”, played. “We were wondering … What are we doing”, Morgan’s voice gently asked. A perfectly understated protest to round off the understated protest set.
