Anohni - 4 Degrees

Anohni is a singer and songwriter originally from England, who started putting out music in 2000. She’s released 6 albums, and won the Mercury Prize. She’s also been nominated for two Brit Awards, and an Oscar. For this episode, I talked to her about the song "4 Degrees," from her 2016 album Hopelessness. It might be strange to describe a song about climate change as an anthem, but that’s what I think it is, and it feels more urgent with every passing year. It’s also one of my most listened-to songs. It was produced by two of my favorite electronic musicians: Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, and Ross Birchard, aka Hudson Mohawke. I got to speak to Ross about how he started the track on his own, before it became a collaboration between the three of them. This is an episode that I’ve been trying to make happen since 2016. Here it is. For more info, visit songexploder.net/anohni. https://songexploder.net/anohni Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com. https://www.sonos.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carry. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by the podcast, What It's Like to Be. Do you ever think about what other people's workdays look like? Satisfying some of that curiosity is the idea at the heart of bestselling author Dan Heath's podcast, which is called What It's Like to Be. In each episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession to find out what it's like to be a professional Santa Claus, or a Secret Service agent, or a long haul truck driver, or an aerospace engineer at NASA, just to name a few examples. The show gives you an insider view into all kinds of jobs from a wide range of industries, answering questions like, what do mail carriers learn about us from our mail? There are so many jobs out there that exist only as titles in our imagination,

• 1:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  if they even register that much. This show is a chance to reach beyond what you know or think you know. If you're curious to learn more about the work lives of other people, check out What It's Like to Be, wherever you get podcasts. There's a new podcast called Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers. In every legendary music career, there's a moment right before it all changes. And in every episode of this podcast, Nile Rodgers talks to a legendary musician about the choices, the events, and the relationships that shaped their career before the moment that everything changed for them. Every story is unique and opens a window into the lives of some of the biggest names in music, and Nile is the perfect person to lead these conversations.

• 2:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Because for over 50 years, he's played guitar with artists like Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk, and Beyoncé. In the first season of the podcast, some of Nile's guests include John Legend, Miguel, and more. New episodes are coming out every other Tuesday. Listen to Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:49Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Anohni is a singer and songwriter originally from England who started putting out music in 2000. She's released six albums and won the Mercury Prize. She's also been nominated for two Brit Awards and an Oscar. For this episode, I talk to her about the song "Four Degrees" from her 2016 album, Hopelessness. It might be strange to describe a song about climate change as an anthem, but that's what I think it is, and it feels more urgent with every passing year. It's also one of my most listened to songs. It was produced by two of my favorite electronic musicians, Daniel O'Patton, aka 100 Tricks Point Never, and Ross Burchard, aka Hudson Mohawk. I got to speak to Ross about how he started the track on his own before it became a collaboration between the three of them.

• 3:33Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This is an episode I've been trying to make happen since 2016. Here it is.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  My name is Anone.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I had started working on an album with Dan Lowpattan on demos, electronic demos, for a whole array of songs. The record I'd been making with Dan was going to be this kind of spectral electro record, but things weren't quite coming into focus.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Hi, I am Ross Hudson-Mohawk.

• 4:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How did you first hear Anone's music and get connected with her?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  It goes back to an after-party that I was at in Glasgow just around the time I had started releasing music. So this would be mid 2000s. Someone played me this song called "Hope There's Someone." Hope there's someone who'll take care of me when I die. Will I go? You know, it was after a night of partying and I was like, oh my god. Hope there's someone who'll set my heart free. Nice to hold when I'm tired. Floods of tears. And I was like, what on earth is that voice? What is this?

• 5:20Speaker 02

  I'm always doing these notebooks full of like dream collabs. So it'd been something that I had been thinking about for years.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  And I actually wrote him an email.

• 5:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Ross found the original email where you said, would you like to ever collaborate? And he wrote back and said, I'm actually finishing up a record. And you are somebody I would love to collaborate with, but I never reached out because I just figured it would never happen.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Which is so weird, considering he was doing records with Kanye West at the time, but okay. But I remember that whole interaction. He is very humble, but he immediately asked me to sing on a song with him for his record and we did it. It was a song that we called "Indian Steps." And then I said, you know, do you have anything else? And he said, oh, actually, a lot of this stuff is just like rejects. Like, a lot of the bigwigs have all like made their way through this old soup and they didn't take it. I said, well, I'll take the leftovers.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  In my head, they were like rap instrumentals. Because that was a lot of what I was doing at that point. But they were very melodic and one of the first instrumentals became Four Degrees.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  I actually made it in Hawaii and it was during sessions for Kanye stuff. We had this little funny studio that's over there that it's in sort of a strip mall. But when you enter the actual studio, it's like, oh, you're looking out onto the ocean. And you know, just like volcanoes around and this kind of thing. And so I had a tendency to lean into these sort of like anthemic chord progressions.

• 7:08Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you remember what the first sound was that he created for it?

• 7:11Speaker 02

  I think it was the drums.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  I wanted something that is almost orchestral, but it has the punch of an electronic thing.

• 7:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Almost like it's like a timpani.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  To make the drums so hard hitting. And the reason things felt so ballistic is because that in the way that people used to double vocal tracks, he would double drum tracks.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  And I was also really obsessed with the horn section in general.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  The important thing for me was it had to almost have like a fanfare quality to.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  And so I was like programming these chord progressions where some of the notes are so close together that the way they interact with each other brings another layer of emotion into.

• 8:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Sometimes people program synth versions of orchestral instruments as like a placeholder. Was that what you felt like you were doing? Or did you specifically prefer the sound of these horns over something actually orchestral?

• 8:43Speaker 02

  I was kind of obsessed at that point with making things that were programmed, but that you couldn't always tell where I liked that uncanny valley.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Is there like 10 guys banging on drums there? A hundred people playing here and this is some huge thing. I liked that confusion.

• 9:09Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And then what's this sound?

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great, great little synth called Synplant. And it faces like a combination of like a plant and a bunch of DNA strands. Basically, like you can grow a sound out of one seed that you plant. It's not that impressive to look at, but I always wanted to use synths and sounds that I knew I wasn't hearing in dance music.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  That feels unfamiliar to me in a good way.

• 9:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What did you think of Ross's instrumental when you first heard it?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  I was very, very into it, very, very compelled by it. And it was the kind of music I was listening to. The music I was doing, working with all these other orchestral arrangers. I was doing symphonic shows. I did the symphony show at Radio City, Teatro Royale in Madrid, at the Royal Opera House in London. I mean, the shows were really elevated and they were beautiful. But within two or three years, I felt like I'd sort of done it. So it was so refreshing to get into electronic beats in a way that hadn't for a long time. Everything came into focus for the album and the project when I heard Ross's demos and they were so ballistic and so seductive.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  It took me out of the role of primary songwriter and put me more into the one who devised the message that would be embedded in the song.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  And everything that I'd been thinking about for the last several years just crawled out of the crevices of my mind.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  It was like my whole last six years plus of obsession with what was going on and the national and global scale just like erupted into lyric.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  It's only four degrees, it's only four degrees. It's only four degrees, it's only four degrees.

• 11:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Could you just explain the premise of Four Degrees and where that phrase came from?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  So about 14 years ago, in the science journals and in consumer-ready science unpackings of global warming, they were delivering us these charts that would say, what will one degree of warming look like? What will two degrees, three degrees, four degrees and six degrees? And they always say six degrees warming was the point of no return, the world would become uninhabitable. Four Degrees, at the time I wrote the song, which was actually 2012, was being described in science journals as an apocalyptic shift in the environment, in the biosphere, in the stratosphere, and in the ways that it would affect us and our civilizations. Well, even two degrees promises the end of the coral

• 12:11Speaker 01

  systems and increasingly forest systems. By the time you get to four degrees, you've pretty much wrapped up all of the gentle systems that have taken millions of years to emerge. You know, the gentle systems of balance, the very beautiful choreography of interdependence that pours forth when nature is in balance. So Four Degrees was kind of a battle cry, a bugle cry of an apocalyptic future. And the idea with the song was to shock people into realizing how perverse it was, that we were invoking

• 12:52Speaker 01

  a level of suffering that we weren't prepared for, the end of life on earth. But I was suggesting by saying, let's go, it's only four degrees. I was trying to embody the voice of people that will drive us to extinction in the alcoholic style of denial. And the harm that they particularly will have facilitated will reverberate. So in many ways, I think that was part of the seduction of four degrees for me to take the position of someone that was delighting in this collapse.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  But at the same time, it's not entirely sarcastic because it's also like a more honest reckoning with the reality of my carbon footprint. I wanna hear the dogs crying for water. I wanna see the fish grow belly up in the sea. Yeah, if I wanna see the dogs crying for water, I wanna see the fish grow belly up in the sea. Because every time I take a plane to do a concert, that's effectively what I'm inviting. So there is a voice in me that feels this way, or at least should be feeling this way. If it's not naming it, it's because it's in a state of denial. But because of the like the firewalls of capitalism,

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I've been shielded from the impacts of my daily footprint in every seamless meal that I eat, in every distance that I travel.

• 14:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  That's so interesting because I've always heard the first version of what you were talking about, singing from the point of view of like a heartless villain who doesn't care about the effects of climate change or even kind of delights in them. But I never thought about the idea that you could be the villain, that this isn't a character that you're making up, but you're singing about your own complicit part in all of this.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  It's the most excruciating part because I can't point a finger at Donald Trump and not see a part of myself in him as a passive beneficiary of his brutal policy, just as any white person in America is a beneficiary of all the racist and monstrous policies of imperialism that led to this Goldilocks zone of our petrochemical comforts. Because it's not just the voice of the other. It is my voice, you know, it is my intention. And I think that that's something that I've tried quite brazenly to embody this idea that this illness that our society suffered from was also within me.

• 15:27Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with Anoni and Hudson Mohawk continues after this.

• 15:34Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 16:13Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Artists can learn more and launch a merch store at distrokid.com/direct. This year, my wife and I are hosting Thanksgiving at our house. And in anticipation of that, I've already started some of the planning. And one of the things that I realized I wanted to have was some kind of small but elegant serving tray that I could put snacks and stuff on while we're just hanging out before the meal starts. So I turned to Wayfair, and I found the perfect thing: these small wooden plates made from acacia. They match the rest of the vibe of my house, and I'm going to be using them even when it's not Thanksgiving. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home, so you can host and celebrate without the stress.

• 16:57Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 17:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Thanks to Stio for sponsoring Song Exploder. I took a trip to Iceland this summer, and because it was the summer, I didn't really think about dressing for the cold. Even though I was hiking and I was planning on seeing some glaciers, I thought, it's August. But then I got there and I realized I made a huge mistake. Now, though, I have a Stio hometown hooded jacket, and I just wished I'd gotten it before my trip. All of Stio's clothes are designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by locals who live, work, and ski in below-freezing temperatures. I'm headed back out into the cold this winter, but now I'll have my insulated hooded Stio jacket. Ski season's almost here, so gear up now, the way the locals do.

• 18:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Go to stio.com/songexploder for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash songexploder. Stio dot com slash songexploder. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole.

• 18:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What was your reaction to what Anoni did with the instrumental you sent her?

• 18:30Speaker 02

  I remember she's sending the song back to me with some kind of rough vocals that actually are about real issues. And I was like, God, these are so heartfelt and beautiful and delicate. And there's so much feeling and emotion in just the recordings of them.

• 18:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Is there something that she does vocally in particular that you really love?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  It's at the end of one of the verses where the line is, "I want to see them boil." I wanna see this world, I wanna see it boil. I wanna see this world, I wanna see it boil. The kind of vibrato on that boil, it's so kind of haunting, but it's so beautiful at the same time. And it's not only the voice, but the delivery.

• 19:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did the instrumental change at all? Did you change it after getting sort of like the first draft or first round of vocals?

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, the arrangement changed and we did all the synth parts.

• 19:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Oh, right, the death siren.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is Daniel.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Dan brought this to bring about this emotional response. He's a master of that.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Dan is such a sensitive composer. Dan's themes are not something I could ever conceive of. He has a very fluid, idiosyncratic grasp of melody and counter melodies that I could never put my finger on.

• 20:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What was it like for you to collaborate in this way with, you know, not just one, but two different producers, both of whom have their own very distinct and, you know, specific aesthetics? What was it like for you to work with both of them together?

• 20:56Speaker 01

  They were amazing together. Hudson actually helped facilitate a more productive relationship between me and Dan because it sort of loosened up my grips about what the creative process should entail. And Ross was also like a master of the emotional rush. So between the two of them, they really were quite amazing. This was really the first album I ever wrote so collaboratively with other people. I was so proud of the work that they did and I felt so supported by them. And I think that they caught the fever of the record in a way because there wasn't really anything else saying these things at that time.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  It's actually one of the most personal records to me that I've done. It had this sort of gravitas to it. And during the making of it, I was unsure if that was going to translate. But it really, really worked and it really was like an eye opener for me. I didn't quite realize the gravity or the magnitude of it at the time of making it. Otherwise, I probably would have freaked out and never finished it. But the way Anohni interpreted the instrumentals and delivered the vocals and the way Daniel brought his elements, it was like, oh, these loops that have been sat on my hard drive, they're like alive now, you know?

• 22:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you believe now, in 2025, that art has the power to affect social change?

• 23:04Speaker 01

  I've never believed it actually had the power to affect social change.

• 23:07Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Really?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  I don't think it does. Personally, I don't. But I do think there's power in art. I do think there's power in music especially. It's like the bugle for an army. My job was to sing the song of my people, people that are on the front lines of dreaming the most productively about social transformation.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  I went into this project maybe with the delusion that I was going to be confronting power, but I think in the end, the people that this music most served or people that felt exactly the same way I do, I think it was this album that really made me realize that people don't listen to music that they don't agree with. People listen to music that affirms them.

• 23:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Well, the album was called Hopelessness and I was wondering if that's what you still feel now.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's a feeling. I think the word there is feel.

• 24:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Like, hopelessness is a feeling. That's all it is. It's not an indication of what's happening or what's going to happen. It's just another feeling, but the feeling isn't that relevant, except in how it motivates you from day to day. So if hopelessness as a feeling is disempowering you in your activism or in your engagement, then I would say, don't entertain it. For me, I need to like honor all my feelings.

• 24:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  You know, maybe don't drown in it, but I needed to say it. Hope is irrelevant. It doesn't pardon you from the table of the conversation. It doesn't pardon you from the anxiety of what's really happening. This is happening and it's continuing to happen. And there is no exit strategy for this conversation. So, yes, I feel extremely hopeless. And does that matter? No.

• 25:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's "Four Degrees" by Anone in its entirety.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  I wanna hear the dogs crying for water. And all those rhinos and all those big mammals.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  I wanna see the fish grow big in the sea. I wanna see them lying, crying in the fields.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  And all those lemurs and all those tiny creatures. I wanna see them burn, it's only four degrees.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  I want to see them, but I'm forced to leave. I wanna see them burn, it's only for degrees. I wanna see them burn, it's only for degrees. I wanna see them burn, it's only for degrees. I wanna burn them, I wanna burn them. I wanna burn them, I wanna burn them. I wanna burn the sky, I wanna burn the breeze.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  I wanna see the animals die in the trees. Let's go, let's go, it's only for degrees. Let's go, let's go, it's only for degrees. Let's go, let's go, it's only for degrees. Let's go, let's go, it's only for degrees. I wanna burn them, I wanna burn them. I wanna burn them.

• 28:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit songexploder.net/Anony to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream For Degrees. You'll also find a link to listen to the episode that 100 Tricks Point never did back in 2016. This episode was produced by me, Mary Dolan, Craig Ely, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscuit. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. And if you'd like to hear more from me, you can sign up for my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. And if you want to support the show in another way,

• 29:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Keshavay. Thanks for listening.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Radiotopia.

• 29:56Speaker 03

  From PRX.

• 30:01Speaker 04

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