Former Ninja Tune artist EERA, aka Anna Lena Bruland, has just supported Public Service Broadcasting on a successful and extensive tour, produced a session for BBC 6 Music and also released her second album, Speak. Here she explains how her love for Queens Of The Stone Age and the odd Russian synth all combined to help her create her unique sound

Photo © Tobias Humble

Regardless of your personal view on things like fate and destiny, sometimes small gestures of kindness can allow incredible journeys to occur. For EERA (Anna Lena Bruland) this moment happened around the age of 15 when a friend gave her a burned CD of Rated R by Queens Of The Stone Age. “I’d constantly listen to it on my Discman trying to not let it skip when I was walking. I absolutely loved it. Before this I was listening to more Norwegian singer/songwriter folk artists like Ane Brun and Thomas Dybdahl. When I got introduced to music from the States and the UK it completely changed my idea of what music could be. From there I moved onto Nirvana, diving deep into all the rock stuff and after Nirvana came Radiohead and PJ Harvey. I just took it all in. It was great.”

It was at this point Bruland picked up her first guitar, developed an interest in songwriting and at 18 decided that in order to develop her craft it was time to relocate from her native Norway. “I always wanted to move to England because my favourite bands are English. I wasn’t very inspired by the music scene in Norway. There’s lots of great schools for classical music and jazz but there’s not really much for pop so I had to look elsewhere. LIPA (Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts) looked like fun so I thought ‘why not?’. ”

That proved to be the catalyst to a music career and in 2017 EERA released her debut album Reflection Of Youth on Ninja Tune and Big Dada, moved to Berlin soon after, and in 2019 collaborated with Public Service Broadcasting on their latest album Bright Magic. At the end of last year EERA released her second album Speak and has been supporting PSB on their successful around the UK and Europe.