Following on from the hugely popular ‘Klavirni’, Emika’s second installment of piano solos are a magical cluster of melodies, dreamy effects, obscure production mistakes with tape echoes and other old analog gear. The pieces were recorded during the time she was pregnant with her first child Silvy, to whom she has dedicated this record ‘To Silvy who heard it first from the inside’. The collection of ‘Dilos’ which means moment in Czech, were recorded ‘in a state of ultra hyped up creativity combined with a massive fear about losing my identity or creativity as an artist once I would become a mother’ – says Emika about the album process. She goes onto say ‘I had this record on the shelf for a long time ready while I was nursing Silvy and one day I decided I better get back to finishing the production and listen to the vinyl test presses. At that moment Silvy came in from her nap and touched my tummy and said ‘mummy’, which freaked me out, as she seemed to associate these pieces and the piano sound with me. Music is a powerful and sometimes unexplainable force.’
FACTS:
1: I’m a Capricorn.
2: I share my birthday with David Bowie.
3: I have a degree in Sound Design.
QUESTIONS:
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
The biggest inspiration for my music is my ability to imagine the future. It is the reason why I wake up and achieve what I produce in music and why I continue to produce music. I can hear music in the future and from the future in my head, I know it sounds odd but I do and that is how I work. My imagination and its idea of the future remain my tools. I perceive these things that don’t yet exist anywhere yet other than in my imagination, or in the dimension of the future, therefore the future is always my biggest inspiration forever.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I can’t remember, I have always been making music. As a kid on the piano, singing along, going to church, I did it at school and my first job was in my friend’s studio. I can’t even remember how it started.
3. What are 5 of your favourite artists of all time?
That’s a really hard question.
Nina Simone
Anton Bruckner
Augustus pablo
schostakovich
Portishead
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Techno, techno, techno, techno.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
The forest. I don’t live in Berlin any more, I live just on the outside and if I look out of my window I see the forest. Trees, many trees and I love trees. Did you know something interesting about trees? They understand that they need diversity to survive, so they will share food and light and energy and water with their competitors in the forest because if one of those kinds of trees gets sick then the other kinds of trees will have stuff that they need to get better so even if they are essentially competing on space and resources, they still find a way to share and get along and work together and I just think that we should all go outside to the forest and study it because we would learn a lot of cool stuff from it.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
That is a ridiculous question! Why would there be no music in the world? Why? Because somebody would kill me, and I would be dead! What would I do instead? I would be dead. There would be no life.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
A double album in two parts called /Self (Part One & Part Two)/ by Sofia Saze. She is awesome.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
I would like to collaborate with Burial. There I said it, Burial. Answer me back, come on man ;)
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
My sold out Planetarium show in Berlin. 100%.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
It is pretty important, I mean, that’s how I do everything.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
I have a daughter who is 2 and a half who always tells me “no mummy singing” because she just wants to mess around with me and play games. She is really controlling and possessive and is obsessed with me so for her if I’m going to do music it means I am giving her 100% attention which she doesn’t like, so she’s always telling me “no mummy singing” even though I know she secretly really likes it, and she really likes to play in my studio. She likes laptops and keeps telling me she wants one and she’s 2 and a half. I am glad we skipped the phone stage, she’s tells me to put my phone away all the time because she thinks phones are dumb, so that’s cool.
Emika performs at Zeiss-Großplanetarium on Friday, 28th and Saturday 29th! Klavirni Temna is available via Bandcamp as vinyl and CD as well as digitally.
Photo © Bet Orten
