Not because it isn’t super memorable — even several years later. Or that it's not a singularly perfect name for the bizarro electronica made by Phoenix multimedia artist Sam An. Even that it somehow repelled people; if anything, chunks of her fan base came with from the name and stayed thanks to An's beguiling work.
No, it's that the name came to exemplify the pitfalls of life as a professional artist. It was, in some ways, another thing that An had to manage, and she found herself struggling.
"Probably around 2019, 2020, I was in a place where I felt very at odds with not just the name, but I think the project itself," she says. "Even though, in some respects, things were happening for me."
She adds, "The origins of this project came from a very mentally turbulent place. And when I started getting whatever kind of attention I was getting ... I was not mentally in a place to [handle it.] Yeah, I was putting myself in the work, and I really cared about it, but in terms of being able to handle any of it, I was not there."
Luckily for An — if you can actually call any of this fortuitous — COVID-19 struck. Being stuck inside alone and becoming what she calls a "hermit" gave An opportunities to re-evaluate her life and artistry.
"I had this slow-burn plan to make that transition from LDR into the next 'level' of the project," she says. "So essentially it was, 'I'm going to take control of this and do this sort of transition now.'"
But it wasn't until later in the pandemic, sometime in spring 2022, when An fully cemented the transformation she'd devised.
"So, ironically, I came out to Austin, Texas, last year [for March's South by Southwest] , and it gave me an opportunity to reconnect with people in the music scene, people I hadn't seen in years," she says. "I was in a place where I thought I was quitting music, to be honest with you. Because it had been so long, and I didn't really have a plan anymore."
She adds, "There were some really traumatizing things around death that had happened during COVID. And I think I was in a place where I was questioning quite a bit about what mattered in life. The thing you thought mattered, my art ... makes you think if it's going to matter in the long run. So it took physically reconnecting — with people I've connected with all around the country, and even people I hadn't met before."
‘In My Heart, I Cared About It’
All those vital personal connections helped An contextualize her career and come to terms with what she still wanted out of being a professional artist."At the end of the day, and it sounds cliche, but you have to make yourself happy," An says. "So that's really the only thing you can prioritize."
That insight gave her the motivation and courage to not only finish up a new record, but to do so in a way that maximized her own inspirations.
"I had this album that I had worked on that I was shelving [because] I'd told myself [it] doesn't matter," she says. "And in my heart, I cared about it. So I wanted to give it a shot for myself, and not really for anybody else. Or even any agenda around what success in the industry is these days."
Part of this acceptance is that An's no longer a newbie, and she's had the chance to learn lessons — the easy and hard ways — about moving through an increasingly complicated industry.
"I think we overcomplicate it when we don't have to. It's very easy to make things about numbers and success," she says. "I think every artist goes through that when you're breaking through — you're just so excited to be doing this at all. I feel like I'm jaded but in a good way now. I feel like you go through such a roller coaster with it that you realize you really can only focus on what's in your control. I can control the output and the art."
An says she can also control some of the more isolating tendencies she's cultivated over the years. She's found the patience and energy to connect with others, as she did in Texas, in making this latest record.
"It's been really satisfying to collaborate a lot with other artists during this album cycle," she says. "Like, even T-shirt and merch designs have been collaborative, which has actually felt better to me than trying to do it on my own. I'm making it less about me, but I'm also making the focus my happiness."
The resulting album is the newly released STREGA BEATA, which translates to "Blessed Witch" in Latin/Italian. The 10-track effort is, per a press release, "an apocalyptic myth" focused around "existential, cathartic, and otherworldly themes. ..." It is, as An notes, "the most time I've taken on anything," adding that’s mostly "because of the pandemic, but it also really has taught me the value."
Death, Rebirth, and Reckoning
In many ways, the record's larger narrative structure builds on An's recent lessons in finding herself and working with others, albeit with a noticeably dramatic sheen."The narrative is this mythological creator figure," she says. "I went through many different revisions of what the hell I was doing with that. But I needed that metaphor to process how complicated my emotions were toward myself and the world at that point. And even through the pandemic, that completely shifted what my lens was on a lot of things."
She adds, "It's cliche, but ultimately the record's theme is death and rebirth. But in more of the sense that you control your own. Basically, it's needing to kill off parts of yourself that are not serving you or the world. We're reaching this point where we need to reckon with things. Like, is the planet even going to survive if we don't reckon with certain things?"
And while the album's clearly darker in its scope and mood, An believes there's something semi-optimistic that abounds.
"Maybe this was part of that experience of the pandemic that I went through, but I think death isn't traumatic, but it's necessary in some situations," she says. "And then in other situations, death is just something that happens, and we have to get through it. We have to be sort of reborn through that process in some way."
Perhaps that's not positive, per se, but it definitely trends toward bigger ideas of fighting back against ever-encroaching darkness.
"I think, ultimately, what you're tapping into was that idea of positivity," she says. "I think that this record is about resilience in a lot of ways, whether it's the story or it's what I personally went through."
Take, for example, the album's final track "Forgive," a profound encapsulation of how these dark energies can ultimately be a force of good.
"I almost wrote ['Forgive'] from the point of view of what it means to actually die," An says. "Then, what is it that you've left behind, and what you've done with your life, and then you almost have to reckon with all of that. I don't necessarily think we die and we're in the dirt. I don't know what it is, but I think there is something bigger."
Compelling and Painful Growth
This "rebirth," of sorts, also has allowed An to experiment musically and creatively — a powerful reminder of why she persevered in the first place."On a technical level, I really wanted to try some things," An says. "Because before, I think the output was, 'I'm in an emotional space. I have certain tools at my disposal. I'm just going to go for it and see what happens.'"
An says with the LP, she "wanted to play around with the bass and piano. Even play with vocals as a texture much more deliberately." To facilitate that process, she even had AJJ's own Mark Glick share "cello sketches" that she used for the record. The end result is, An says, "dense and deliberate. There's the genre blending, but it's less chaotic, maybe."
At the same time, however, recording was also a chance to reconnect with past favorites.
"I used to just sit there and dissect what was going on with [Nine Inch Nails'] The Downward Spiral and The Fragile," An says. She adds that the latter "has so much going on sonically, and it doesn't commit to one genre, but it isn't trying too many things. It's still pretty cohesive." She also found inspiration with metal duo The Body, who "approach metal as being more like art-metal and not doom in a genre sense."
So, then, is she proud of the record? That's maybe a tad reductive, but at least for now, she has a better relationship with it than some of her past efforts.
"The thing with [2018's] Shadow World is that I wanted to walk away from the name," An says of her life during that album. "I wrote that record in such a mentally unwell space. And I couldn't even listen to the thing honestly until this year, when I started connecting with people who let me know how much the record meant to them."
That's not the only thing An has reconnected with, either. The LDR name, she says, has become less of a scourge and more an opportunity of sorts.
"I feel like the name is a vessel for getting this work out," she says. "And I think it's also something that I've accepted as a part of my history. I was just talking to someone about this: For every negative opinion that you get, there's usually 10 more compliments that you're ignoring."
It helps, An adds, that "you've got musicians that come from the internet [these days] and their names are their handles, and it really is kind of random. But no one cares, especially this new generation."
Because at the end of the day, growth is a journey, one that is as compelling and affirmational as it is ugly and painful. For An, it's not about band names or popularity or any other ephemera. It's about whatever happens next as she treks this world as a perpetual creator.
"I don't know if I see myself in 15 years as being this," An says. "This is a part of who I am — even the complicated stuff of coming full circle after abandoning it and almost quitting music. I really want the work, and [more] opportunities to connect in the world. Even more than a traditional 'blowing up' kind of music career."