Anne Frankenstein was buying records from an early age and started DJing when she was just 15. Her career has been a consistent pursuit of exciting opportunities to share her favorite records with a crowd ready to get down. She’s spun at major festivals (Field Day, Green Man, Love Supreme) and sizzling hot club nights in NYC, and been called upon by MGMT and Beth Ditto to play after-parties for people who take their party music very seriously. She also holds down residencies at landmark London venues such as The Jazz Café, Spiritland, and The Social. Beyond her commitment to these clubs, she also hosts several shows on Jazz FM, where I often catch up with her eclectic mix of old, familiar, and refreshingly new tracks. Alongside her club and radio work, Anne has been part of the judging committee for the Brit Awards and hosted and compered many industry panels and events. It was a pleasure to catch up with Anne to find out more about her and her love of music.
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. You’re originally from Ireland, a proud Dubliner no doubt, but what’s the history behind the German associated name?
People ask me all the time if it’s my real name, and it has become my real name to some extent, especially after Nile Rodgers told me it was ‘the coolest name on the planet.’ It’s more of a nickname really. And what can I say, the name Frankenstein somehow seems to suit me!
How and when did you first fall in love with music and digging?
Going way back, I give credit to my grandad who died on the day I was born. He was a sax player and a jazz lover who traveled across America playing music, settling in New Orleans for a while before going back to Dublin. Even though we never met I feel like my love of music started with him. I was always obsessed, always singing, always wanting to listen to the radio no matter what I was doing. Then I started taping songs off the radio and making tapes for the car, and then there was no stopping me. Loving music was one thing, forcing the music I loved onto other people felt like my true calling! I always wanted to explore older music and find weird or unfamiliar stuff to play, and growing up without the internet really the main resource for older music was record stores, so I started digging and collecting, which lead to DJing which I started doing when I was about 15. I was pretty useless in school but the music was the one subject I could commit to, I was a keen singer and guitarist too. After school, I came to London to study music at uni and I’ve been here ever since.
You’ve constantly performed at major music festivals and venues such as London’s Jazz café, and Spiritland. What is your most memorable gig and why?
There have been so many great ones – playing with Gossip and MGMT at Somerset House, playing in New York at Soul in the Horn for a room full of professional dancers, Friday at night at Love Supreme Festival is always fun too. But the most memorable ones are where you feel the greatest connection to the audience – that could be a mellow afternoon at Spiritland where everyone in the room just gets it, or the basement of a tiny sweaty pub playing New Orleans soul to a bunch of drunken students, or Jazz Café on a Saturday night when everyone loves the music as much as you do.
In contrast, are they any particular gigs you’re not proud of or would prefer to forget?
I was heading towards burnout before lockdown happened, playing 4-5 late-night gigs a week while broadcasting on Jazz FM every morning. That period is a bit of a fuzz but I definitely wasn’t enjoying playing very much and I lost my love for it slightly during that time.
I’m an avid listener of your Jazz FM slots (albeit via catch up half the time!) What made you decide to become a radio host?
In contrast to DJing in clubs, a radio show is your own little corner of musical airspace where you can do what you want and invite people to join you. You can share your love of the music, explain why you picked each track rather than shoulder the responsibility of keeping the vibe in the room going. I wanted my own little patch of musical earth, so I started presenting a show on this tiny community station, broadcasting from the basement of a pub to maybe ten listeners at a time. I was dreadful at chatting on the mic, it didn’t come naturally to me so I knew the only way to get better was to keep doing it. Any time anyone would compliment me I’d write their words down in a notebook to encourage myself. Eventually, I moved up to bigger and bigger stations until Jazz FM kindly gave me a shot.
Do you have a particular process for research and discovering fresh sounds that fit your repertoire?
My whole world is music, I have music in my face and ears every waking minute. Labels send me music, friends send me music, people I’m connected with on social media are constantly posting tracks and mixes. I fall down Youtube holes regularly, and of course when record shops are open nothing beats crate-digging, finding a pile of records that look interesting, and listening through them all afternoon on the shop deck. Obviously, jazz and soul are my loves but I recreationally listen and seek out all kinds of stuff, I love folk, country, prog, classical, it’s all good.
You have an ear for jazz, funk, and numerous genres. This is evident from the eclectic mix of artists I hear you play. What would be your all-time top ten list of albums, and why?
This all depends on day/time/mood etc but for now, my top ten looks like this:
- Solo Piano II – Manu Dibango: solo piano music really gets to me and this is a beautiful, simple album of African melodies which I never get tired of.
- Karma – Pharoah Sanders: Most of this record is dominated by The Creator Has a Masterplan, which sparked a lifelong love of spiritual jazz and is still a place I retreat to in tough times.
- I’ve Known Rivers – Gary Bartz: Again, I feel transported by this record every time I hear it. So much wisdom in the words and in the playing.
- Small Change – Tom Waits: The first Tom Waits record I heard and I was just dazzled by how sleazy and sentimental it is while still being clever and cool in that way everything Tom touches always is.
- Blue – Joni Mitchell: I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love this album. I could have picked several different Joni records but this is the one that feels the most like a perfect album to me. Every song is a little jewel.
- Graceland – Paul Simon: like Joni, this is probably an obvious choice, and I know it gets some flack now due to this idea of appropriation but it still stands up as a great album for me. The production is perfect, it’s a brilliant pop record.
- Ill Communication – Beastie Boys: I stole this CD from a friend’s brother when I was a kid and it just seemed shockingly cool to me then, and still does. The samples led me back towards older funk and jazz and the aesthetic and the attitude was just like manna from heaven to a weird kid me. Lead to a lifelong Beasties obsession.
- It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Gonna Love You the Best – Karen Dalton: an album I heard as a teen which was my first taste of Americana folk blended with jazz. I love every song on this album and her voice is so unique and beautiful.
- Negro Prison Songs (From the Mississippi State Penitentiary) – Various/Alan Lomax: It’s incredible to me how almost all popular music can be traced back to ‘folk’ music like this. I love early blues and traditional Irish music for the same reason.
- Manhattan Research Inc – Raymond Scott: These early electronic sounds are just delightful to listen to, not to mention what they represent which is electronic music in some of its earliest form. And Ray always sounds like he’s having fun. A real genius.
How has the pandemic impacted how the station broadcasts, are you all working remotely or back in the studio?
We have an incredible team at Jazz FM and pretty much immediately we helped each other adapt to broadcasting from home. It was a bit daunting at first but I love it now. Me and my producer figure stuff out over Whatsapp during the show, and I’ve been able to interview some amazing guests over Zoom. I moved house in October to a nice quiet spot next to the River Lea. My studio looks right out onto the river, a goose has laid her eggs right next to where I broadcast from every day. It’s hard not to blab on about all the river drama while I’m on the air!
The way we consume music has changed dramatically over the last decade, particularly with streaming channels and alternative methods of buying music. What are some of the challenges facing radio stations today?
I might have answered this question differently 18 months ago, but radio is in such a healthy state right now. Firstly, in a world where we’re so saturated with access to music, it’s important to have some curation, someone to introduce you to new things and pick out old favorites you might have forgotten about and having that shared experience of enjoyment, or maybe learning something new about what you’re listening to. Secondly, radio is a friend – it’s such an intimate source of company and entertainment, far more than TV. If I play a track I love and I’m trying to explain why I love it, I genuinely do feel like I’m speaking to just one person and connecting with them over the music. I think lockdown has really re-established radio’s important place in the world.
Alongside club and radio work, you’ve been part of the judging committee for the Brit Awards and hosted and compered many industry panels and events. I didn’t know this, but you also voiceover for BBC TV. You seem to have fingers in various pies. What other projects are in the pipeline?
Most recently I’ve been given my own music column at the Big Issue, which I’m really excited about. It’s such a brilliant magazine, and I love writing – it’ll give me the chance to connect with a whole new group of people. Aside from that, I’ve got a couple of TV bits and pieces coming up including an appearance on a documentary about Grace Jones airing on the BBC this year. And there’s the podcast I present with my friend Eamon called What Goes Around, which focuses on music fandom – we have some amazing guests booked in.
Where can readers find out more about you?
I’m at @djafrankenstein on Twitter, DJ Anne Frankenstein on Facebook, and Instagram. My website is www.djannefrankenstein.com, you can listen to my show every weekday from 10 am GMT on Jazz FM or catch up afterward at Jazzfm.com. I also present a classical/ambient show on Scala Radio on Sundays at 1 pm GMT. And you can find our podcast by searching What Goes Around on all podcast platforms!
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