Sound+vision

on the radar

keren ann
singer/songwriter

words by Sophy Grimshaw

In person, there’s more than a touch of the 1960s siren to Keren Ann Zeidel. It’s the combination of her sharp cheekbones and dewy complexion, soft French accent, and shaggy-chic haircut with its eye-sweeping fringe. In an earlier decade, she might have been hot property as an artist’s muse, but Keren Ann is five albums into her career as a singer/ songwriter and has a creative vision that’s very much her own.

“I feel that I have achieved my own sound, but I’ve also taken the liberty of mixing up a lot of different influences,” the 33-year-old explains in her dressing room before a show, where the black biker boots she will wear on stage stand empty by the wall. Sometimes she’ll strap on a harmonica rack, Dylan-style, and recently, she’s taken to closing her live show with Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. “I will always listen to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. They’re my biggest influences. The press tends to compare me to female singer/songwriters of my own generation, and I’ll go out and buy their records because I haven’t heard them. It’s funny.” Among the most persistent comparisons are those to singers Cat Power and Hope Sandoval, each known for rich, sorrowful vocals.

“Some people have called my music ‘impressionistic rock’,” continues Keren. “I like contrasts, like teaming a timid piano part with trashy guitars.” She hand-picked a small Icelandic choir to assist on her newest record, the eponymous Keren Ann (she has never used her last name professionally). The album melds their sparkling glissandos with the fuzz of guitars and the hazy-yet-direct vocals of the chanteuse herself.

Fans from Paris to New York City try claim her as their own. She named her previous album Nolita after the NYC district she lived in, and says New York is “a place where you can feel completely strong or like someone is strangling you, but you have all this energy to create”. But the truth is that Keren Ann is nobody’s home town girl. She’s Dutch-Indonesian on her mother’s side and Russian-Jewish via Israel on her father’s. She grew up in Israel, Holland and France before spending time in the States and, most recently, Iceland. “When I try to tell people where I’m from and where I’ve lived, I feel like a robot reciting a long list,” she smiles. “I’ve never felt that my music was world music, but I am always very influenced by environments. I can feel the energy of places very easily, how they affect me, and turn that into songs.”

The album Keren Ann is out now. This November Keren tours France and Switzerland. See www.kerenann.com

double lives

Ever wondered what serious internet gamers are like? A new book profiles players around the world, comparing their real lives to their online avatars

words by Sophy Grimshaw

Ailin Qin lives in Frankfurt, Germany. Her avatar, or virtual alter ego, is named Anshe Chung, and her company Anshe Chung Studios controls roughly 13,000km2 of virtual space in the computer simulation Second Life. In real life this has earned Qin over one million US dollars in sales of virtual land, goods and services. “Anshe Chung is not an extension of my real-world personality,” explains Qin in Alter Ego, a book by writer and photographer Robbie Cooper, which profiles over 60 avatar creators. “Rather, it’s the public role I adopt, much like Britney Spears or Madonna adopts an outward persona.” While Qin’s avatar mirrors her physically, another of Cooper’s interviewees, scientist Ulrike Jung from Berlin, is represented in the game EverQuest II by a cat-like musician named Jacra Cirandi. Jung seems like she’s having fun with her character, which she created as an entertaining diversion from her intensive PhD research. But when another gamer, Serge Creola from Brussels, describes his avatar Megatox in the City of Villains game, it’s heavy stuff: “Megatox is all that I would like to be – strong, famous, respected, feared by some,” he admits a little creepily. “Together we make one complete person.”

Alter Ego, Avatars and their Creators
by Robbie Cooper, published by Boot, available for â‚¬21.95 from Amazon

Album review

The Cardigans – Greatest Hits

The Cardigans, Swedish rock’s most enduring export, are at their best when things get heavy. Even their most sugary songs, including the lovely Lovefool, have a bittersweet taste. Like vocalist Nina Persson’s hair, their albums grow darker every time. The global fame of 1998’s Gran Turismo was never the band’s favourite game. From Been It and Erase/Rewind to For What It’s Worth, savour their melancholy majesty.

Greatest Hits – Polydor, released 5 November

Film preview

The Golden Compass – directed by Chris Weitz

There are airships over Oxford and armoured bears ruling the icy north in the first film to be adapted from Philip Pullman’s celebrated His Dark Materials trilogy. Daniel Craig (Lord Asriel) and Nicole Kidman (Mrs Coulter) star in this dazzling fantasy adventure, where the destinies of a young girl, Lyra (newcomer Dakota Blue Richards), and two universes are bound up with her ability to read a powerful truth-telling device, the alethiometer. A more complex and grown-up alternative to Harry Potter.

The Golden Compass, New Line Cinema, released in Europe from 5 December

Art preview

Robert Adams and Lee Bul

This double-header brings together a veteran photographer, who made his name depicting industrial encroachment on the American West, and a Korean artist who is best known for asking whether iPod culture is turning us into cyborgs. Robert Adams exhibits three of his classic series, while Lee Bul’s strikingly monumental glass structures reflect her interest in the theories of Bruno Taut, the early 20th-century German architect. Go, and get a different perspective on landscape.

Robert Adams and Lee Bul, 16 Novemeber – 27 January Fondation Cartier, Paris, www.fondation.cartier.com

Also out this month…
Cate Blanchett reigns again in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which explores the English queen’s relationship with Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). Disney’s Christmas film is Enchanted (pictured). A fairytale princess travels to today’s Big Apple, and animation and live action merge. Julie Andrews narrates and Amy Adams plays the lead.

Keeping you entertained…

Through November and December, Shrek the Third and Norbit are being shown on selected Sterling flights. Turn to the back of this magazine for more information.