Emika - Emika

In a recent interview with DIY, Emika defined her eerie ice-cool bleep-age as ‘a beautiful nightmare’, and with that remark she’s spot on. For the spookily meandering and forward-thinking ‘Emika’ doesn’t really follow the dreamy blogospheric norm; instead it drips into the dank, dark and nightmarish world of brain-pummelling bass music. This is a lovingly and meticulously manicured album with her heavy-heart and soul poured into it: an intimate affair of inextricable self-loops and unremitting bass shudders, and a record which plays out like a female doppelganger of that hypothetical CMYK-packed James Blake LP.

Post-dubstep’s shtick has always been about chill, r ‘n’ b samples and wonkiness, but Emika’s unique spin involves heavy doses of Berlin techno and profuse garish hooks. Indeed, ‘3 Hours’ in its sparse arrangement of vocoded vocals and synthesized twinks provides the ultimate unsettling start. The result is a bit like how Katy B’s dubstep-indebted grooves might sound but if bleak and gothic like Zola Jesus and recorded in somewhere akin to a rat-infested sewer. The refrain of ‘Hit me…’ is mysterious to say the least.

The dissonance and marching drums of ‘Common Exchange’ recall a rather forgettable MIA B-side, but amends are made as recent single ‘Professional Loving’ sounds to our ears more suave, sexy and shiver-inducing than ever. The industrial clicks and reverberating crescendos of ‘Pretend’ evidence the unlikely influence of Delia Derbyshire (who dun the Doctor Who theme tune) - and what comes out our end is an intensely intricate mash-up of off-kilter bleeps and buzzes, perhaps the epitome of said ‘beautiful nightmare’. The final standout comes courtesy of closer ‘Credit Theme’, which could easily have sound-tracked the most chilling of Haneke thrillers. Its supple piano sways are in stark contrast to everything else on this record but this is so apt; Emika’s deft abrasion requires subsequent healing.