a chinwag with hachiku (aka anika ostendorf)

What’s the best description of your music you’ve heard? The Music once wrote, “Hachiku sounds like if Wes Anderson recorded Beach House’s second album Devotion”. I quite like that. We heard you played in an interesting band as a teen... My mother played in a cover band called SCRP (Sweet Chics and Rat Pack) with her co-workers from the IT department at the Ford factory. When one of their bass players quit, she asked if I wanted to replace him. Everyone was in their 50s and 60s, but 14-year-old me had just started learning bass, so thought it’d be fun. Our first (and only) gig was at the Ford IT Christmas party, and every cover was rewritten to suit the Ford theme. Strangest thing you’ve written a song about? “Shark Attack” is about the grief I felt when my childhood dog back in Germany was diagnosed with cancer. When I found one of his hairs in my jumper, I didn’t know what to do – I couldn’t just abandon it. The song lyrics are about finding that hair and eating it to internalise what it stands for. (Disclaimer: I didn’t actually eat the hair. Or did I? I can’t remember.) What’s your secret songwriting recipe? Force the lyrics out. Don’t step away from a line until you’re happy with it. It’s like when you get to the end of a toothpaste tube and need to roll and squeeze it and hurt your thumb to get a sliver out. That sliver is where the magic lyric sits. What has living around the world taught you? It’s not about where you are, it’s who you are and what you do that makes you feel fulfilled.