Emika (album)
Encyclopedia
Emika is the debut studio album
by the Bristol
-born electronica
artist Emika
, released in the United Kingdom
on October 3, 2011 (in the United States
on October 11) by Ninja Tune
. The album was produced by Emika and mastered by the Berlin
engeneer Rashad Becker.
as her instrument throughout her musical education and beyond. In Berlin
she started to collaborate with engineer Rashad Becker. Speaking of inspirations, she mentioned the roots techno
culture because "it was a movement with sound and dancing at its very core. It was not about idols or stars, it was about sound and people coming together to dance and feel free" and also dubstep
from Bristol
and London
, for "originally it was deep spiritual music made by kids for kids". These two influences combined with her being a classically-trained pianist and a singer. Speaking of influences, Emica mentioned Delia Derbyshire
, the Radiophonic Workshop composer who came up with the original Dr Who theme ("not so much for the sounds she made as rather for her questing spirit, it inspires me as I go ahead mapping my own musical realm") but also Mahler and Rachmaninov. "Historically they are worlds apart, and yet much of their music shares a beautiful sense for tragedy. The tragedy of life itself, as it were. Not in a way that creates sadness within the listener, but in a way that makes one hold on dearly to every moment lived," she explained.
The songs of the album have been based on narratives. "I start with an idea, a story, and then I seek to find the sound world that best dramatizes my story, making it into a song. I try very hard to stay faithful to my narratives and not fall into the trap of genre conventions which is why I’m shy of genre references", Emica explained.
The single was remixed by British dubstep producers Kryptic Minds and also Marcel Dettmann.
On September 5, 2011, Ninja Tune released the fourth single "Pretend/Professional Loving". The first track, in Emika's words, is "about all sides of fakeness, disbelief, dancing on the head of a pin. It begins with a synth I made to feel like a heartbeat, and ends with psychotic hi-hats playing a melody which will come get you while you sleep," the saecond about the way in which the music industry uses "friendship" as a form of control. Among the remixers were Berlin experimentalists Brandt Brauer Frick, Kyle Hall and DJ Rashad.
, which assigns a normalized
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reports an average
score of 73, based on 12 reviews.
The album (self-described as a "beautiful nightmare") has been characterized variously as "unique and exciting", "varied and impressive", "very accomplished", "incredibly strong and consistent in it's approach", "disconcerting but bewitching", "immediately engaging", "intriguing, dark, seductive and as hard to pin down as its creator".
Kyle Ellison of Drowned in Sound
described Emika as a "mysterious and alluring new voice" and lauded her successful merging of techno and dubstep, that fact that "can only be credited to her great understanding and enthusiasm for both". To the critic, the album "has a remarkable sonic balance, creating a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere that lasts from beginning to end", which is mirrored in the lyrics, too. Commenting on the album's dark intensity, Ellison opined the it "…might indeed prove too much for some listeners, offering very few cracks of light amongst its shadowy, industrial exterior", picking two tracks, "Drop the Other" and "Double Edge" as this otherwise somble piece's brightest moments.
AllMusic's Jon O'Brien credited Emika with an attempt to take dubstep, that's gone mainstream, "right back into the underground". Her "tension-filled soundscapes are unlikely to be jostling with recent chart-toppers Nero
and DJ Fresh for the number one spot", the reviewer argued. Calling the album's "fusion of ethereal melodies and hushed harmonies with avant-garde electronica and twitchy rhythms" as "enchanting as it is unsettling", O'Brien mentioned particularly the sinister 'FM Attention', which, with its "elasticated synths, eerie industrial noises, and echo-laden banshee vocals" seemed destined to "be played over the finale of a particularly trippy horror movie". A recurring theme of the album, the "sense of disorientation", ensures that "you're never quite sure where Emika is going to go next", according to Allmusic. While "all tracks resonate with themes of alienation and genuine melancholia and isolation", it's "the beauty found hidden inside these over-arching themes that really makes Emika's debut a triumph", according to The 405 review.
Killian Fox of The Observer
, while speaking of how the atmospheric, "slow-burning and bass-heavy" sound of the album owes much to the Bristol sound of a trip hop
era, noted that the influence of Portishead "can be heard in [Emika’s] crystalline vocals, but it doesn't define her. Berlin has had an effect, too, and the care with which she has programmed the sonic landscape of tracks such as 'Drop the Other' speaks of an immersion in that city's techno scene", the critic concluded.
BBC
's Wyndham Wallace has traced the connection between Emika's day job at Berlin
's influential music software company Native Instruments
, and the sound of the album: "It's the sleek, sophisticated sonics that make her work so irresistible... This is, first and foremost, an electronic record, and it's impossible to ignore the depth of the sub-bass that shudders beneath much of what she offers – something that would make James Blake
jealous", he wrote in a BBC Music review. Wallace, one of several critics who highlighted Emika's classical piano training, found the good example in the closing "Credit Theme", "which sounds like it was written for the closing scenes of a black-and-white French romance". AllMusic, on the other hand, picked up "Professional Loving" as harking back to her classically trained beginnings "with their opening piano intros/outros (something also alluded to on the closing Beethoven-inspired instrumental 'Credit Theme')". "The skittering muted beats, indecipherable wailings, and ambient effects of the melancholic 'The Long Goodbye' explain why Thom Yorke
is such a big fan", Jon O'Brien added. Incidentally, the "female James Blake labels are inevitable but rather misleading, as Emika doesn't really sound like anyone else out there", the AllMusic reviewer warned.
"It is cool and mysterious yet with enough hooks, variations and beats to keep you interested. Think the icy tension of The xx
meets the occasional piercing self awareness of PJ Harvey
in a world of electronica and you may be somewhere near this album: a surprise for a new listener certainly", Mandy Williams of Subba Cultcha argued. "Finally, though, it's the sheer intensity of the whole package that seduces. Pop enough to be immediately accessible, but dark enough – in fact almost gothic, in the same way as Zola Jesus
is gothic – to be mysterious and provocative, Emika leaves you wanting more, even though you know it's sometimes rather troubling", Wyndham Wallace of the BBC concluded.
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by the Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
-born electronica
Electronica
Electronica includes a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for a wide range of uses, including foreground listening, some forms of dancing, and background music for other activities; however, unlike electronic dance music, it is not specifically made for dancing...
artist Emika
Emika
Ema Jolly, best known as Emika, is a British-born female electronic musician of Czech origin currently residing in Berlin. Her self-titled debut album was released in October 2011 via Ninja Tune and received generally good reviews.-Biography:...
, released in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
on October 3, 2011 (in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on October 11) by Ninja Tune
Ninja Tune
Ninja Tune is a London-based independent record label started by DJs Matt Black and Jonathan More, better known as Coldcut and managed by Peter Quicke. The label has a strong leaning towards mostly Electronic Music...
. The album was produced by Emika and mastered by the Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
engeneer Rashad Becker.
Background
Emika chose a software studioRecording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
as her instrument throughout her musical education and beyond. In Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
she started to collaborate with engineer Rashad Becker. Speaking of inspirations, she mentioned the roots techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
culture because "it was a movement with sound and dancing at its very core. It was not about idols or stars, it was about sound and people coming together to dance and feel free" and also dubstep
Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in south London, England. Its overall sound has been described as "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals"....
from Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, for "originally it was deep spiritual music made by kids for kids". These two influences combined with her being a classically-trained pianist and a singer. Speaking of influences, Emica mentioned Delia Derbyshire
Delia Derbyshire
Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.-Early...
, the Radiophonic Workshop composer who came up with the original Dr Who theme ("not so much for the sounds she made as rather for her questing spirit, it inspires me as I go ahead mapping my own musical realm") but also Mahler and Rachmaninov. "Historically they are worlds apart, and yet much of their music shares a beautiful sense for tragedy. The tragedy of life itself, as it were. Not in a way that creates sadness within the listener, but in a way that makes one hold on dearly to every moment lived," she explained.
The songs of the album have been based on narratives. "I start with an idea, a story, and then I seek to find the sound world that best dramatizes my story, making it into a song. I try very hard to stay faithful to my narratives and not fall into the trap of genre conventions which is why I’m shy of genre references", Emica explained.
Singles
Prior to Emika release came out four singles which later were included into the album. The first one, "Drop The Other", came out on January 18, 2010 and was followed by "Double Edge" (May 10, 2010). On April 11, 2011, "Count Backwards" was released, "the story of an over-fed yet undernourished soul in search of a little peace and quiet," according to Emika. She expanded:The single was remixed by British dubstep producers Kryptic Minds and also Marcel Dettmann.
On September 5, 2011, Ninja Tune released the fourth single "Pretend/Professional Loving". The first track, in Emika's words, is "about all sides of fakeness, disbelief, dancing on the head of a pin. It begins with a synth I made to feel like a heartbeat, and ends with psychotic hi-hats playing a melody which will come get you while you sleep," the saecond about the way in which the music industry uses "friendship" as a form of control. Among the remixers were Berlin experimentalists Brandt Brauer Frick, Kyle Hall and DJ Rashad.
Critical reception
Upon its release, Emika received positive reviews from most music critics. AnyDecentMusic?AnyDecentMusic?
AnyDecentMusic? is a website that collates reviews of contemporary music albums, covering rock, pop, electronic, dance, folk, country, roots and urban...
, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reports an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 73, based on 12 reviews.
The album (self-described as a "beautiful nightmare") has been characterized variously as "unique and exciting", "varied and impressive", "very accomplished", "incredibly strong and consistent in it's approach", "disconcerting but bewitching", "immediately engaging", "intriguing, dark, seductive and as hard to pin down as its creator".
Kyle Ellison of Drowned in Sound
Drowned in Sound
DrownedinSound.com or DiS is a UK based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway . The site is an editorially independent music website.-History:...
described Emika as a "mysterious and alluring new voice" and lauded her successful merging of techno and dubstep, that fact that "can only be credited to her great understanding and enthusiasm for both". To the critic, the album "has a remarkable sonic balance, creating a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere that lasts from beginning to end", which is mirrored in the lyrics, too. Commenting on the album's dark intensity, Ellison opined the it "…might indeed prove too much for some listeners, offering very few cracks of light amongst its shadowy, industrial exterior", picking two tracks, "Drop the Other" and "Double Edge" as this otherwise somble piece's brightest moments.
AllMusic's Jon O'Brien credited Emika with an attempt to take dubstep, that's gone mainstream, "right back into the underground". Her "tension-filled soundscapes are unlikely to be jostling with recent chart-toppers Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
and DJ Fresh for the number one spot", the reviewer argued. Calling the album's "fusion of ethereal melodies and hushed harmonies with avant-garde electronica and twitchy rhythms" as "enchanting as it is unsettling", O'Brien mentioned particularly the sinister 'FM Attention', which, with its "elasticated synths, eerie industrial noises, and echo-laden banshee vocals" seemed destined to "be played over the finale of a particularly trippy horror movie". A recurring theme of the album, the "sense of disorientation", ensures that "you're never quite sure where Emika is going to go next", according to Allmusic. While "all tracks resonate with themes of alienation and genuine melancholia and isolation", it's "the beauty found hidden inside these over-arching themes that really makes Emika's debut a triumph", according to The 405 review.
Killian Fox of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, while speaking of how the atmospheric, "slow-burning and bass-heavy" sound of the album owes much to the Bristol sound of a trip hop
Trip hop
Trip hop is a music genre consisting of downtempo electronic music which originated in the early 1990s in England, especially Bristol. Deriving from "post"-acid house, the term was first used by the British music media and press as a way to describe the more experimental variant of breakbeat which...
era, noted that the influence of Portishead "can be heard in [Emika’s] crystalline vocals, but it doesn't define her. Berlin has had an effect, too, and the care with which she has programmed the sonic landscape of tracks such as 'Drop the Other' speaks of an immersion in that city's techno scene", the critic concluded.
BBC
BBC Music
BBC Music is a team working in the department of Audio and Music Interactive at the BBC. Responsible for the BBC Music website - the portal site to music content across the BBC website....
's Wyndham Wallace has traced the connection between Emika's day job at Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
's influential music software company Native Instruments
Native Instruments
Native Instruments is a technology company that develops software and hardware for music production and DJing. The company has originally been identified mostly with software instruments, but has also expanded to various other music equipment segments in recent years.Current products of Native...
, and the sound of the album: "It's the sleek, sophisticated sonics that make her work so irresistible... This is, first and foremost, an electronic record, and it's impossible to ignore the depth of the sub-bass that shudders beneath much of what she offers – something that would make James Blake
James Blake
James Riley Blake is an American professional tennis player. Blake is known for his speed and powerful, flat forehand. As of August 2011, Blake is ranked no. 63 among active male players with 24 career finals appearances...
jealous", he wrote in a BBC Music review. Wallace, one of several critics who highlighted Emika's classical piano training, found the good example in the closing "Credit Theme", "which sounds like it was written for the closing scenes of a black-and-white French romance". AllMusic, on the other hand, picked up "Professional Loving" as harking back to her classically trained beginnings "with their opening piano intros/outros (something also alluded to on the closing Beethoven-inspired instrumental 'Credit Theme')". "The skittering muted beats, indecipherable wailings, and ambient effects of the melancholic 'The Long Goodbye' explain why Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke
Thomas "Thom" Edward Yorke is an English musician who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter for Radiohead. He mainly plays guitar and piano, but he has also played drums and bass guitar...
is such a big fan", Jon O'Brien added. Incidentally, the "female James Blake labels are inevitable but rather misleading, as Emika doesn't really sound like anyone else out there", the AllMusic reviewer warned.
"It is cool and mysterious yet with enough hooks, variations and beats to keep you interested. Think the icy tension of The xx
The xx
The xx are an English indie pop band, formed in London in 2005. The band's members met while studying at Elliott School, the same school that produced Hot Chip, Burial and Four Tet. They became a trio when their second guitarist and keyboardist, Baria Qureshi, departed in late 2009. In September...
meets the occasional piercing self awareness of PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
in a world of electronica and you may be somewhere near this album: a surprise for a new listener certainly", Mandy Williams of Subba Cultcha argued. "Finally, though, it's the sheer intensity of the whole package that seduces. Pop enough to be immediately accessible, but dark enough – in fact almost gothic, in the same way as Zola Jesus
Zola jesus
Zola Jesus is the stage name of Russian American singer/songwriter Nika Roza Danilova . Having released three EPs and two full-length albums, combining industrial, classical, electronic, goth and experimental rock influences, she received generally good reviews and was regarded as one of the names...
is gothic – to be mysterious and provocative, Emika leaves you wanting more, even though you know it's sometimes rather troubling", Wyndham Wallace of the BBC concluded.