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ARTIST
TITLE
Poem 1
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
KRANK 252CD KRANK 252CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
5/1/2026

"'I wanted to try / And go very far.' These are the first words on Poem 1 and reintroduce an artist who's in a conspicuously different phase of her life than she was when her debut album, Because of a Flower, sprouted nearly six years ago. Heartbroken and reflective, Ana Roxanne surveys the transformations that followed and displays a new-found boldness. Her voice is naked, vulnerable and alive, no longer shrouded in tape noise or looped and echoed beyond recognition beneath layered electroacoustic textures. Throughout the course of Poem 1, Roxanne displays her skill as a singer and songwriter in the classic sense, using the limited instrumentation simply to accent her exposed tones. Muted piano phrases and plucked bass notes languidly trail her anguished siren song on 'Berceuse in A-flat Minor, Op. 45,' making each word count. On 'Keepsake' meanwhile, she sounds as if she's alone in an abandoned bar, stroking the dust off the piano's keys as she inventories her emotional scars. There's a smell of old whisky in the air, but Poem 1 is a remarkably sober album; never wallowing in self-pity, Roxanne finds catharsis in the logic of her expressions, twisting out the edges of her memories into surreal, cinematic asides. 'Untitled II,' the album's pronounced, uninhibited centerpiece, delivers on the Lynchian promise that's been present since her first EP. Purring over a brushy, decelerated rhythm and funereal piano, Roxanne glances the edge of a hot spotlight, cutting through the stage smoke with her glassy evocations. And when she interprets the Robert Schumann's lied 'Stille Tränen' on 'One Shall Sleep,' she turns Justinus Kerner's words into a whispered echo of her own grief, narrating the 19th-century poem over syrupy synthesizers and strings. There's a light emerging on the horizon, though; burying her past on the choral standout 'Cover Me,' Roxanne shifts the pace and the mood on 'Atonement,' lifting her voice into a gentle lilt."