* En anglais uniquement
Describing her music (tongue in cheek) as "death gospel,"
A.A. Williams writes and performs dark and deeply atmospheric songs with a textured voice, matched by her instrumental abilities on guitar, piano, and cello. A classically trained musician with a taste for "all things heavy,"
Williams encompasses post-rock, folk, goth, metal, and classical influences in her music. Her style was introduced to the world on her self-titled debut EP in 2019, and her first full-length effort,
Forever Blue, followed in 2020. A stop-gap collection of covers dramatically reworked in her signature style,
Songs from Isolation, was issued in 2021; later that same year, she revisited her debut EP with strings on the EP
arco.
A resident of London, England,
A.A. Williams first took up music as a child when she needed a creative outlet after being told she was too tall for ballet class. She began studying piano when she was six years old, and since the same teacher also gave lessons in cello, she learned to play that as well. While she grew up immersed in classical music and listened to mainstream pop for fun, in her mid-teens she picked up a CD by
Deftones and quickly developed a taste for heavy metal and its many subgenres. In 2014,
Williams found an electric guitar in the street with a note reading, "Please take me, needs work." With the help of a friend, she got the guitar back in working order and taught herself to play. As she gained confidence with the instrument, she began writing songs that were dark, dreamlike, and reflected her belief that heavy doesn't necessarily mean loud.
After recording a set of demos,
Williams submitted them to an independent label, Holy Roar Records. The label offered to release them as is, but she opted to re-record most of the material, and Holy Roar issued her self-titled debut EP in early 2019. That April, she made her live debut at the 2019 Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands as part of a Holy Roar showcase.
Williams next found herself opening tours for
Russian Circles,
Explosions in the Sky,
Amenra, and the
Sisters of Mercy. She was also booked for the 2019 ArcTanGent Festival in Bristol, England, and the Japanese experimental group
Mono invited
Williams to record a single with them, "Exit in Darkness" b/w "Winter Light."
Williams signed with
Bella Union Records for the release of her first full-length album.
Forever Blue appeared in July 2020 and featured guest appearances from
Johannes Persson and
Fredrik Kihlberg of
Cult of Luna and
Tom Fleming of
Wild Beasts. When the COVID-19 pandemic prevented her from touring to support her album, she responded by recording solo performances of cover songs important to her and releasing them online. A set of nine such performances,
Songs from Isolation, was issued by
Bella Union in March 2021. Another studio project was issued in October 2021;
arco was a four-song EP with
Williams offering a new perspective on the songs from her debut EP, this time arranged for a ten-piece string ensemble. ~ Mark Deming