The German electronic underground has always been a world apart, but Emika is on the crest of a wave that’s crashing the depths of sub-bass on everyone’s doorstep in 2012.
The Berlin-based producer and singer has been piqueing ears since her very first single, “Drop The Other,” which used the palette of the heaviest beats to craft three-minute pop songs, albeit of the darkest kind. Kind of like Beyonce for the bass set.
We’ve been into her, okay, obsessed with her ever since then. She proved us right with her strong full-length debut last year, whose woozy beats and jagged melodies impressed on us the need to worship at the altar of Berghaim — a topic that Emika touched on in our interview with her back in October. She talked about it in the context of sex swings, actually, but also about its musical magnetic force.
We caught her first trip to New York City a few months back for the full MTV Iggy treatment. Most DJs lose their power outside their club kingdoms, but Emika’s icy glamour shone under bright studio lights. It helped that she’s a little Marlene Dietrich, a lot sexy Amazon. Check it all out in our backstage photo shoot with the red-lipped siren.
For her exclusive MTV Iggy performance, Emika dominated the club sound system, pushing out the groove on her spaceship-dashboard-sized sampler. She shook us, literally, with her renditions of “3 Hours” and “Double-Edge.”
Check out her heart-thudding performance of “3 Hours,” the lead track on her self-titled debut:
In “Double Edge,” she shows us that a live performance of her second-ever single is not-to-miss:
Our ears were still throbbing when we caught up with her for a live interview, in which the UK-raised, Berlin-based artist of Czech heritage turns out to be a worldly ambassador for the dirty dubstep underground. Like all charismatic people, she has something to prove, and as she tells our Heather Holliday, part of that has to do with breaking into the male-dominated music industry.
“Very rarely does an in-house team accept me,” she said, speaking of performing at venues run mostly by men.
You can hear her tell you the story herself in our live interview, “Emika Cuts Through the Noise”:
But man or woman, when folks see her do her thing, they’ve got to acknowledge that she’s beating the boys at their own game. So if you can’t beat her, join her, which is what bass innovator Amon Tobin did last year — she opened for his global tour and rocked sold-out stages from London to LA.
She’s currently working on her latest album, which she promises will be legato. It might be mellow, but we’re confident that this dubstep diva will keep it in the key of bass.
In the meantime, Emika’s latest EP 3 Hours, featuring the title track and “Hit Me” off her LP, plus remixes by Jimmy Edgar and KiLon Tek, dropped last week. Her self-titled debut full-length, out this past October, is available on iTunes.