Emika – Emika (Ninja Tune/Inertia)

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In the wake of every exciting underground musical movement is its gradual diffusion and then its slow descent into the mainstream. Emika is one of those halfway points. This is not quite music that will flood the airways anytime soon. Yet the undoubted aroma of ‘nowness’ is all over it, from the oh-so-2008 block font of the title in the artwork to the slavish resonances of the classic dubstep which serve as the album’s roots.

Which is not to say that Emika is devoid of its own pleasures. A track like ‘Be My Guest’s keeps its one note bassline brooding to dark dramatic effect. Opening track, ‘3 Hours’ utilises techno-esque rhythms and dispenses with a bass riff completely, replacing it with a most satisfactory sub-bass drone, suffocating the beats. The bottom end across the entire album is great – a menacing beast kept in check but which, none-the-less, still dominates proceedings. ‘The Long Goodbye’ sprinkles sine-bells over an abstract wash of bass while the following ‘FM Attention’ threatens to break out into dark drum’n’bass at any moment, but is held in check as skittering IDM without any easy release. ‘Drop The Other’ flirts with contemporary r’n’b stylings while ‘Credit Me’ closes out the album with an intimate, minor-key piano excursion.

In and of itself, there is much to enjoy. But the nagging question is, ‘what is the point?’ Emika herself is packaged as coquettish object on the cover and, lyrically, she wavers between banal triviality and outright counter-feminism. “Hit me when you want it and I’ll take the blame/Hit me and I guarantee you’ll feel the same/Hit me if you think that it’ll help the pain/Hit me hit me hit me hit me anyway”. It could be a harrowing first-person account of domestic violence, but the delivery is all sex-coo, undermining any possibility of social commentary. Emika’s vocals don’t actually add much to the established order of dubstep, and this is where it all feels a bit superfluous. There are no gobsmacking melodic hooks, nor any overwhelming personality to make them essential. In the context of dubstep’s history of disembodied vocal hauntology on one hand and urban commentary on the other, these sound astonishingly trivial. And this is my biggest issue with the album. The vocals really are the only thing that Emika is adding to the established dubstep template. Yet these don’t really bear up under scrutiny, leaving us with little more than that by the template dubstep, packaged as sexy trend music.

Ultimately, Emika is part of the segué.

Adrian Elmer

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About Author

Adrian Elmer is a visual artist, graphic designer, label owner, musician, footballer, subbuteo nerd and art teacher, who also loves listening to music. He prefers his own biases to be evident in his review writing because, let's face it, he can't really be objective.

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