Few artists have navigated as many creative worlds as Annie Hogan. From her early work with Marc and the Mambas through a sustained solo output and collaborations with artists such as Lydia Lunch, Jarboe, and Barry Adamson, her career has been marked by constant movement and reinvention. With Tongues In My Head, Hogan turns decisively inward, creating a deeply personal album shaped on her own terms.
Recorded at her Studio Blue and written, performed, mixed, and produced by Hogan herself, the album explores themes of ritual, sacrifice, inner turmoil, and transcendence. Drawing on folklore, spiritual imagery, and a distinctly cinematic sense of place, from American Southern landscapes to pagan British terrain, the songs feel both ancient and immediate, grounded in tactile instruments and instinctive performance.
In this email interview, Hogan reflects on the inspirations and creative process behind Tongues In My Head.
What were the inspirations behind Tongues In My Head, both thematically and musically?
Annie Hogan: The themes are somewhat multi-layered tapestry, but underlying factors thread through the album, including navigating the complex darkness, understanding the universe, exorcising the inner turmoil, all that fun stuff. I’m fascinated by folklore, rituals, reaching the portal to the otherworldly domain, wherever or whatever that may be and the endless mystery of life and death. Invoking the spiritual realm, Pagan rituals, circling snakes, speaking in tongues, voodoo, all of the frenzy from around the world provided a lot of visual magic to draw on. It seems to me that the bigger or longer the ritual, the further or deeper the voyage. I go through my own rituals in the studio to access my inner zone or ‘the zone’ the place of no doubt and first strikes. It’s hard to relay, but the gut feelings were everything, every note practically played itself as the emotions and the physical playing invoked perfect resolution, for me anyway. I found myself in two major thematic worlds: an American cinematic vision of wide open spaces, suggesting west of the Mississippi ‘Western’ imagery along with Native American land rituals imagery, mixed up with Tennessee snake circling church terrain and the vast swamps of the deep South. I had another alternative dreamworld going on, envisioning Pagan English rural scenes or Welsh mountainous settings suggesting sacred landscapes, ritual, sacrifice, magic, witchcraft, sun worship, standing stones, fire and the full moon.
Musical inspirations blues, rural traditional from the Deep South, outlaw country from Tennessee, Nancy and Lee, Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks for Sergio Leone’s iconic trilogy. 70’s English folk harmonies, Nico’s harmonium and sense of power and self purpose on the lp Live in Tokyo 1986! Lou Reed’s use of ostrich tuning, the Velvet Underground and Nico and the sombre darkness of Leonard Cohen’s first 3 albums.
But really the musical instruments in the studio provided the main musical inspiration! I am fortunate to have quite a few old 1960’s and 70’s Italian keyboards, mainly ace organs, a lovely marimba, a 1930’s full sized huge xylophone, glocks and lots of other colourful instruments. The visuals in my head drove the songs, both musically and lyrically, how and what instrument I played determined the tonal atmosphere of the pieces. It’s all in-head cinema really.
You handled everything except working with an engineer on the actual recording. Having worked in a variety of situations throughout your career, could you talk about how this approach compares creatively with more collaborative work?
Annie Hogan: Having a full time sound engineer at my studio has been the most liberating experience! I brought Dan in at the beginning of the 2025 year and we updated the studio in a variety of ways before proceeding with recording in Spring. The freedom to be in the zone I talked about earlier. We developed a recording system and worked through the songs. Short days with huge amounts achieved was key to making this record. I did longer days mixing but not much more and I always put the final mix down the next morning after a night dreaming the final mixdown thoughts. Certainly the long hours are long gone but otherwise I’m not sure how my approach differed too much compared to my previous collaborative work. However, I don’t have to deal with another entity who has opinions and wants their input etc or I send a piece of music off into the matmos and have no control on its final sound afterwards. But that’s part of the excitement of that type of collaboration, you trust in the people you are working with who have trusted you.
I thrive under my own sails and I’m collaborating with myself on this record, I am the band, I am the artist, composer, lyricist, producer, all of it so it’s been interesting finding other aspects to my own talents and pushing myself further as an artist. Physically working in a studio with a band, several bodies offering input, lots of improvised ideas, it can be counter productive and a little draining at times, but with the right people, fantastic albums can result, as did with Marc Almond. My Kickabye ep was more of an improvised happening, a unique collaboration set in a certain time, the iconic 80’s London cool chaotic and unshackled atmosphere I was embedded in. But I always needed to practise, write and express myself in the confines of my own studio, my own working environment where I could relax and produce music without too much interference. I always had some version of a home studio across the years, 4 tracks,12 tracks, porta studios, tape machines. a natural progression to my current set up. My last big collaboration was on my 2019 album ‘Lost in Blue’ produced by old mate from Soft Cell and now sadly departed Dave Ball. It was the ultimate collaborative procedure. I collaborated with the singers, with the band, with the producer, with the label, and with Peter Ashworth for the photography. I used 3 studios, recording between my place, Liverpool’s iconic Parr Street Studio (now closed) and the studio in Richmond in London. So that was really involved. I was spinning a lot of plates and with such a great record felt it was a good way to draw the line under that type of complex collaboration. The need to strip back is always front and centre these days.
Anyway, meanwhile I had joined Regis Downwards imprint at the same time and since then only I’m always looking forwards. In fact I collaborated with Regis straight away in Milan to record some vocals, I just did a bit of singing and guided proceedings with the engineer. Quite a minimalist collaborative experience with bonus Italian food and vibes. It all keeps the fire ignited and the inspiration always transpires as I’m always open to it.
Do you see any negative aspects to working on your own?
Annie Hogan: No, only positives, Regis is only a call away if I do need another opinion. On this LP the engineer was with me every day on recording days, but I wrote mostly in solitude and mixed in solo too. It was and is bliss for me to revel in my own tactile environment.
What was the timeframe for making Tongues In My Head? Were you involved in any other projects concurrently?
Annie Hogan: I spent at least 4 months recording and mixing Tongues with an extra month pre production. Yes, one concurrent ace project did happen, I worked on a couple of tracks for Regis’ Berlin based band EROS with Boris Wilsdorf (Einesturzende Neubauten’s sound engineer) and Liam Andrews (My Disco, AICHER) as I’m an extra band member. It was a fun distraction and enabled me to chat to Karl a bit on the side and ask him if he had any lyrics for a particular song I had, he did, the very moving ‘Safe Hands’.
Did the sound or overall direction of Tongues In My Head evolve in any particular ways over the course of making it?
Annie Hogan: Yes, the album evolved along the way, and my desire to make a concept album gradually gained momentum. Each song felt connected to the whole, an essential element in the greater construct as it were. I experimented every day in the sound of each instrument, the sound of my voice, guitars, we worked out ways of working, techniques for recording live in the room, all headphone based and easy for me to move around the room to specific instruments. No time consuming moving microphones anymore or finding leads and all that annoying extra noise. We prepared bigtime. I used microphones and amps placed around the one large acoustic studio room and my recording engineer and I recorded the whole album in situ. As a producer I leaned towards my skills to create mysterious melodic narratives with strong foundations hopefully with lyrical potential, this was my vague intention and experimenting was key to every element. I had clear ideas about the musical elements I wanted to use, simple beats on my old Boss Dr Rhythm drum machine with my own percussive elements, piano being the main starting point. I did start writing on other instruments, The Conjurer was actually written on my acoustic guitar and I experimented using the garden ambience. Vocal techniques developed along the way. I did multiple harmonies employing a sort of ‘Deliverence’ style singing family in my head to do these harmonies. I have to say this was all quite an organic thing. Just kind of happened. All the music just came, all the lyrics too. It was a mystery working, even to me. When I listen back now all these months later, after sublime mastering from our guy in Japan, I really think wow. It sounds brilliant.
At six tracks, do you consider it an EP or an album?
Annie Hogan: Very much an album, it is epic in nature, is a concept by design, is about 35 minutes long, so is a standard perfect vinyl LP length.
The arrangements tend to be minimalist, but there are always interesting and unexpected touches. In your creative process, what is the interplay like between production / thinking about the sonic palette and songwriting?
Annie Hogan: It was all very organic and intuitive, each aspect intrinsically linked to the other. It was an all in one experience, whatever I started recording, which was often also writing in real time, or written that morning (or at the very latest the night before) and developing the song from there, instinctively just hearing in my head what to do next. All the songs progressed like this. I just knew, I could genuinely clearly hear the whole arrangement in my head and then just put it down part by part. The sonic palette revealed itself as recording progressed, a concept album overall ‘sound’ was always my intention. The mixing stage was fairly straightforward due to my recording and production techniques.
Do you have plans for this material to coincide with the release, such as videos and/or live shows?
Annie Hogan: I have made a video for “Death Rituals,” which is the lead single, out 23rd January! We shot it ‘in house’ during New Year’s Wolf Moon properly powered up by a fire, it was intense and fantastic fun and I felt the natural empowerment from the stardust and natural elements.
Our visuals man at Disruptive Patterns put all the patterns together and created a wonderful film, the label loves it, I love it and we fully intend to make more! I imagine using the films in a live environment, let’s see what happens. In the meantime I’m studio bound.
Tongues In My Head is out February 5th on Downwards via Boomkat
To purchase music and get more info, visit https://linktr.ee/AnniHogan or annihogan.co.uk.
