ANNA
Genre: Techno
Origin: Brazil
Ana Miranda, aka ANNA, is a rare example of a musician and producer completely comfortable shapeshifting between two parallel careers in electronic music, representing her two worlds – Techno and Ambient.
The globally-prolific Brazilian-born, Lisbon-based DJ and producer moved to Barcelona in 2015 to be nearer the European dance music circuit – a scene that had grown fond of her hypnotic and melodic techno released on a range of vital labels from Drumcode to Plus 8, Mute Records to Afterlife. Her summer 2019 hit ‘Forever Ravers’ with Miss Kittin on Kompakt lit up dancefloors around the globe and became a pandemic anthem while her powerful, driving productions continued to evolve and enrich her sound with every new track, often distinctively infused with an ambient essence that served as a primer for her shift towards the ambient music world.
Anna is now twenty plus years into a celebrated and highly revered career, one that had elevated her from the dancefloors of Six – the nightclub her father owned in the rural outskirts of São Paolo, and where she first cut her teeth behind the decks. ANNA was – and remains – every bit the sought-after techno superstar – she continues to perform at some of the world’s most esteemed clubs including DC10, Hi, Printworks and Warung and takes to the stage at iconic festivals ranging from Movement to Tomorrowland, TimeWarp to Coachella. In the last years, she’s delivered classic crossover remixes for the likes of Jon Hopkins, Orbital and, now, her huge rework of Depeche Mode’s ‘My Cosmas Is Mine’ – which the band embraced hugely despite it not even being a selected single from their 2023 album. It was granted Pete Tong’s Essential New Tune on its debut radio play on BBC Radio 1.
Anna has been a DJ since she was 14 year’s old. “I experimented with all styles in the beginning. After some time, I found my identity and it was techno. I became focused on my career 100 percent of the time. I would practice for ten hours a day, and I was always researching and planning,” she says. It’s this drive – an incessant desire to “make better music and be more creative” – that led her to a neurofeedback centre in Germany in October 2017. This is where she took the vital next steps in her self-realisation journey – opening her mind and forever altering her creative process and worldly outlook in the process. This would eventually lead to the creation of her debut ambient album ‘Intentions’ (released with Mercury KX through Decca this year), which sees her trading in her club-driven production for sound healing and ambient sensibilities. “I left the centre totally surrendered to spirit and to my soul. I thought, ‘What is it that life wants to pass through me?’”
She’d long been interested in spirituality and utilised meditation as a tool for recentring for some time. However, it had never been her main focus. These days, she is fully committed to following the course as well as other forms of spiritual and meditative practice – including Transcendental Meditation, Vipassana (“You’re in your process; you don’t speak to anyone, and you meditate for 10 hours a day”), and Shamanic energy healing training.
After the course in Germany, she started to experience things differently. Classical music is something she discovered a passion for after opening herself up to a more contemplative and love-filled way of life. Ambient, too. In fact, her ‘Intentions’ journey started with ANNA experimenting with sounds and frequencies to use as a tool in her meditations and contemplative moments. Using pianos and flutes; and sound healing techniques, she’d listen to these works – these soundscapes for self-realisation – while exploring the world. The outside world, of course (both touring and nature itself remain fruitful sources of inspiration) but also the inner. This debut album includes a collaboration with Grammy Award-winning artist Jon Hopkins; long-time ambient guru Laraaji and contemporary ambient artist East Forest. Their acceptance of Anna’s ambient project is a result of the power of the music.
It is her understanding of how the Techno and Ambient worlds can sit side by side that makes it feel so natural. “I am everything. I am the stillness, the chaos, the light. I’m combining these worlds. I am bringing this more open and spiritual side to my techno side, so that everything becomes one.” In doing so, ANNA’s found a way to channel her emotional empathy and crowd-reading talents into her current output across her two musical careers. Anna’s very own name is a palindrome and her career is now the same: two worlds, one true artist.
