Anthony Jones & Monica Richards – Syzygy

Als Anthony Jones zum ersten Monica Richards wegen eines gemeinsamen Songs ansprach, hätte sich niemand vorstellen können, wie fruchtbar diese ursprünglich nur live geplante Kollaboration werden könnte. Monastic, das bekannte Kunstprojekt von Anthony coverte bereits erfolgreich Suicide Commando, L‘ame Immortelle und Wumpscut. Der neueste Coup ist das kreative Mashup von Monica Richards Faith and the Muse Songs mit den eigenen Werken Anthony‘s. Das Spektakel ist dieses Jahr erstmalig auf dem renommierten Leipziger Wave Gotik Treffen zu sehen. Die EP Sygyny enthält die spannenden und virtuos instrumentierten Höhepunkte dieser Zusammenarbeit.

When Anthony Jones reached out to Monica Richards about doing a special live show together, neither one had any idea how far this idea might go…

Anthony Jones is a versatile artist with a phenomenal voice, best known for his performance art project MONASTIC. His cover versions of Suicide Commando’s “Love Breeds Suicide,” and L’ame Immortelle’s “Love is Lost,” and vocal contributions to :Wumpscut:’s “Killuh,” has exposed Anthony to a larger European audience. A long time Faith and the Muse fan, as well as a close friend of singer/composer Monica Richards, Anthony wrote her about playing a live show in San Francisco in 2016. The two began to chat back and forth about their mutual admiration, and a new duo emerged.

With Anthony’s solo albums featuring old world instrumentation fused with darkwave synths and beats, and Monica’s solo work in such a similar fashion, it was very easy to merge their musical styles to create some new songs for their performances. And now with their very first European show at the 2018 WGT, they decided to put out a special CD featuring some of their song fusions. The CD is called SYZYGY, an astronomical term for an event in which one astronomical object is lined-up with another, as the Sun and the Moon.

Their first musical merging happened when Monica added her piece “The Mighty” from her solo album, Naiades, to Anthony’s “We’re the Vikings, Remember?” from his own album, Guardian of the Wolf. The subsequent combination, which they titled, “The Mighty Vikings”, became a sensational live piece. This made them join together other songs, with Monica even singing new variations from her work in Faith and the Muse.