Anne Malin - Strange Power! (Live at the Pinhook) (Bootleg) (Cassette)

For the survivor, to be witnessed and believed is a salve, a catalyst toward integrating horror even as they remember and affirm: this is who I am / who I am is so much more.

During the years of recording, inviting remote collaboration on, and mixing and mastering Strange Power!, I faced the uncanny burden of being my own witness. The private pains, acute and somehow already even unrecognizable to myself—of divorce and of childhood abuse, of confronting both at once for the first time, because I had to—embedded themselves in these songs and sounds, wanting transformation.

To release these songs, to perform them with a live band for the very first time, facilitated an active and constellating kind of witness, out of my own interiority and into a collective, a community. It’s a witnessing you can listen to, and see, and feel. The sound of a bell or a drone, the glance of a friend, the shadow of a hand, the warm light, the cool air.

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I will take you with me
You wrote so many stories for me

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