You're an oxymoron

I've been listening to lots of new music recently which has led to me writing nothing here. This of course is completely against the point of having a place to tell people your opinions on music but this music has been so good, I wanted to listen to it a hundred times and squeeze every bit of joy out of these records before I attempted to tell you about them.
I've good news to report though, much like a teenage boy, you can squeeze and squeeze but the goodness just keeps flowing (too much?).

Ninja Tune released their beautifully packaged retrospective Ninja Tune XX: A History of Beats and Pieces last year to great aplomb, packed full of fantastic reworkings, exclusive remixes and brand spanking new music from one of the greatly innovative labels.
One of the records that stood out immediately from listening through was Double Edge by Emika. Drawing her influences from the evolving Bristol music scene as well as her training as a classical pianist and composer, Emika talks intelligently about the creation of music and how people connect with it's various instruments.

“I am focused on the world of sound and the power of the human voice, the instant connections it makes with listeners, in music. In general I feel there is a lack of vocabulary in the field of electronic music.”
Emika, Ninja Tune profile

Emika went on to live in Germany and it was while she was there that she connected with the legendary Techno club Berghain which has played host to some of the worlds best DJ's. The club is housed in a former power plant and it was while attending nights at Berghain that she noticed the entire building resonating with frequencies.  As her interest shifted into how the sounds of the building influenced the songs being played, she was led to investigate the sounds a building would make without the influence of a large sound system impressing sound upon it. After sampling sounds such as strobe lights and drinks cooling systems, she made her field recordings available to Ostugut Ton artists to create music for their 5th birthdau compilation, entitled Fűnf.



Double edge is a breathy piece of electronic music, it's dub bass line and beats could easily be taken as menacing but her softly spoken vocals emerge from the smoke to offer a glimmer of hope, a ghostly apparition that could easily be friend or foe. To use the term glitchy on her vocals is not quite accurate, they stutter instead perhaps and, combined with the beats, highlight her industrial influences from her surroundings to create a piece of 'dubstep' that has very little 'step' to it. As with so much contemproary electronic music, she is perhaps highlighting the benefits that space can offer in a recording, as Scuba has done before here and James Blake since and this space is filled with a cautious ponder, an unnerving openness.

Check out her first single Drop The Other or the darker Double Edge and revel in her treacly music slowly smothering your ears and mind.


Emika - Drop The Other by Ninja Tune

Emika - Double Edge by Paris PngPng