She's got quite a pedigree, has ANNA DOMINO. Born in Tokyo (as Anna Taylor), her childhood years were divided between Florence in Italy and Iggy Pop's old stamping ground, Ann Arbor, Michigan before she continued on to a restless teenage existence in Ottawa, Canada and finally fetched up in New York where she refurbished lofts before dipping her toes in the musical pool by trying out for the Bush Tetras among others.
Breathless, nomadic stuff by anyone's standards, and since Anna's musical career finally got kickstarted when Les Disques du Crepuscule released her single "Trust In Love" in 1983, she's pursued a similarly erratic, restless musical path ever since, releasing a clutch of terrific, but all too sporadic records, the most recent of which was Snakefarm's "Songs Fom My Funeral" in 1999, where Anna and partner Michel Delory rebuilt ancient American folk standards such as "Tom Dooley" and "Banks Of The Ohio" in the most esoteric of trip-hop images.
To date, anyway, Domino's most prolific period has been the 1980s, and while there was the mini-LP "East & West" in 1984, her eponymous full-length debut (originally released by Crepuscule/ Factory in March 1986) remains the place to start if you're on the Domino trail.
Produced and mixed by Alan Rankine (ex-Associates/ Paul Haig) and Telex man Marc Moulin, "Anna Domino" is still a sleek, attractive pop affair almost twenty years on from its' first release. It's undeniably sophisticated, but never empty and glossy, and while the use of Fairlights and now outmoded rhythm programs may date tracks like "Drunk" and "Not Right Now" (which especially suffers thanks to some horrendous, burbling synth bass), these devices don't spoil the strength of Domino's creations even this far down the line.
In fairness, even those tracks are perfectly listenable, but there's lots of truly excellent gear here. "Rythm" leads off: deceptively simple with a circular piano refrain, saxophone, congas and a slightly African feel supplementing Anna's gorgeous, breathy vocals, it's a fine opener, but by no means eclipses what comes along in its' wake. Indeed, it's soon challenged by the sparse, but dynamic "Koo Koo" and "Caught", which is almost a trip-hop forerunner with its' chiming marimba loop and mesmeric atmosphere.
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Meanwhile, in a better world, both the album's singles "Take That" and - especially - "Summer" would have been nestling high in Top 10s worldwide. Both are punchy and direct, though Domino's philosophical lyrical slant is a nice counterpoint. The infectiously catchy "Summer" for instance, finds her singing lines like: "In a waking dream, I haunt my youth." It gives the songs an effectively eerie edge, even when she's realigning a cover like Smokey Robinson's "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game", which in her hands becomes itchy, skanky Eurofunk and is very cool indeed.
This being an LTM re-release, we also get bonus singles and B-sides to flesh out the picture. These are all perfectly respectable and Arthur Baker's 12" mix of "Summer" peps up the song's percussive dancefloor credentials and brings up the drums'n'horns to great effect. However, surely the best thing here is the nice, noir-ish cover of Merle Travis's chestnut "Sixteen Tons". Featuring upright bass and blaring trumpet, it's an evocative set-piece and almost a dry run for the weirder, out-there shapes thrown by Domino and Delory's Snakefarm project 13 years later.
"Anna Domino", then, is the best possible introduction to a seductive, mercurial character who continues to make far too few orbits into our Earthbound pop world in the 21st Century. A second volume from Snakefarm or a brand new Domino album would be wonderful news, but for now looking back into the future is a blissful enough exercise.
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