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Anderson sculpts his ritualistic and cinematic ambient industrial soundscapes using self-made field recordings of everything from insects in the mountains outside Kathmandu to a washing machine in Reykjavik, from countless sketches and abandoned projects donated by friends, from hundreds of hours of multi-track live recordings of Drekka captured all around the world, from his own voice and various instruments and objects found around his house. In this way, he works with memory not only as a subject but also as a process, continually delving into this personal world of sound; examining, revisiting, and repurposing recordings and forgotten snippets of the voices of out-of-touch friends into new moments and experiences. Drekka owes something to the soundscapes and non-linear impressionism of Cindytalk or Coil, the industrial gravity of Einstürzende Neubauten or Hafler Trio, and the cinematic collaborations of Edward Artemiev/Andrei Tarkovsky or Simon Fisher Turner/Derek Jarman. But his work is singular, unique, and very personal. Throughout years of performing and recording, Drekka has explored early industrial tape culture, fragile bedroom noise-folk, and expansive cinematic textures. His work and performances touch on themes of silence, memory, and forgetfulness. But rather than obscure himself, as is so often the effect of experimental music, Drekka functions as a direct line into Anderson's mind and his tenuous cache of memories. These personal aspects and this fragility are clearly on display, rather than being obfuscated by poetic abstractions. While "haunting" and "hypnogogic" are words often used to describe experimental music and art, DREKKA unequivocally occupies and deals in those dark spaces which comprise the tenuous province of memory and dreams. Those are the real ghosts of time and sound. Just as prominent, particularly in the live setting, is a sort of confrontation; a wrestling with frenetic energy that approaches mania or ecstasy. Just as Drekka's recordings serve not to obscure but to exhibit Michael Anderson's mind, his performances serve to exhibit his person, his body. Drekka's audiences behold not an anonymous face in the glow of a laptop, but a man riding his flimsy card table strewn with tape players, bells, trinkets, metal, and pedals. They behold a man's spirit riding him, contact microphone in mouth, hands shifting cassettes collected over time and distance. Drekka's audiences behold a confrontation of spirit, body, memory, and sound.
Anderson has also recorded with and toured in the bands of Jessica Bailiff, Dylan Ettinger, In Gowan Ring, Lovesliescrushing, Annelies Monseré, Rivulets, Stone Breath, and Turn Pale.
"Anderson's more recent music is, impressively, every bit as cave-bound and inscrutable as the more youthful, mournful cries heard on this LP, but "No Tracks in the Snow" is a more than viable point to start digging." - Noel Gardner for The Quietus / "No Tracks in the Snow : 1996-2002" (2019, Dais)
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