Header photo: Julia Gruessing (Emika).
Judging from the broad spectrum of her various endeavours in the last few years, it became clear that the Berlin-based Emika is indeed “one of the busiest woman in the electronic world”. After launching her own label Emika Records in 2014, the Anglo-Czech classically trained artist released the Techno maxi Melancholia Euphoria, an LP of solo piano music called Klavirni, followed by her third Dubstep-driven album Drei as well as two more EPs – everything in less than two years.
This year, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, Emika finished another mammoth project by writing, composing and recording the narrative symphony Melanfonie with the Prague Metropolitan Orchestra and soprano Michaela Srumova. After she’s been constantly engaged in channeling her very specials creative restlessness, for Off The Tracks the never-tiring sound designer took some time to breathe and reflect her artistry by writing about one of her newest fascinations: osteopathy.
It’s weird. I never stopped before. I never once stopped to ask myself what am I doing, why do I need to do this, where is it all going? I was my happiest busy, making stuff, learning new things, traveling, I was completely addicted to music and everything and everyone that came along with it. Is it possible I spent the last 15 years in some sort of trance?
I fall in love easily, and I followed my heart with so many things in music, singing, writing, learning engineering, sound design, production, composition, DJing, programming, running a label, being arty, being commercial, and the biggest bomb of all was my recent symphony. Now I know I can do all this stuff, do I really want a career in music? Why now after all this time is the word “career” in my head anyway? In my heart, I’m still 15, and I think this sucks big time, and having a “career” is the opposite of living on the edge as an artist.
I obsessively watch interviews with all kinds of people on YouTube, and I was listening to Barack Obama talk about how he is entering “the second act” and I got thinking about this. There is this stigma around artists second albums, how they are the hardest to make. And a lot of artists simply never make second albums. Perhaps that is what this phase is, my difficult second album, only it’s more like my second act.
I had a few appointments with an osteopath recently, years of sitting hunched up over a laptop needed some attention. I was curious to find a doctor, who could see me as a whole person. Someone who could treat the glitch in my body and perhaps the glitch in my mind. More and more, the medical world divides people into tiny parts and a thousand specialists.
