Influences: Anna Ternheim

The Swedish artist looks back...

Anna Ternheim's new album moves across the Atlantic, venturing into fresh spaces while also re-discovering old acquaintances.

Out this week, 'A Space For Lost Time' is a vibrant, gilded return, with her superb songwriting – honed across a decade of fantastic music – augmented by a select batch of guests.

Moving from her Brooklyn home to sessions in Anna's native Sweden, the record also took in a spell at Echo Park, the highly creative area that skirts Los Angeles.

An inspired return, 'A Space For Lost Time' is informed by all manner of different elements, drawing on the full force of Anna's life…

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Siouxsie and the Banshees – 'The Passenger'

We danced a lot in our home when I grew up. After Friday night dinners my dad put on music real loud and then we just let ourselves go, I think this is when my love for music was born.

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Jan Johansson – 'Visa från Uranmyra'

Swedish jazz pianist that died back in 1968. I really love this song and the album its on where he interprets old Swedish folksongs, bringing them back into peoples living rooms.

The melodies are from another world, so beautiful, this music still inspires me to write.

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Nina Simone – 'See-Line Woman'

Bjorn Yttling produced my third album 'Leaving On A Mayday', When he heard my first demos he told me to put away the guitar and go listen to Nina Simone. He wanted me to listen to the vocals, when the vocals is strong and leads the melody you can strip away everything around it.

Nina Simone doesn’t need anything around her voice. We ended up making a record with almost no guitar, mostly strings and drums and the vocals being the absolute centre of everything. It was very inspiring, it made me write in a completely new way.

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Fairport Convention – 'Fotheringay'

I made an album in Nashville a few years ago. I listened a lot to Fairport Convention before and during that recording. Again, I love these folky melodies and lyrics that bring you to another time. I really got into fingerpicking and writing songs that could lean on guitar alone.

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Pink Floyd – 'Wish You Were Here'

This song, this record. I never get tired of it. I can just stare at the cover and that’s enough to get me inspired, I have it on the wall in my workspace, I could a have chosen a track from 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' or 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' or 'The Wall', their music has been with me always.

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'A Space For Lost Time' is out on September 20th. Catch Anna Ternheim at London's Oslo on November 20th.

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