Pardon The Interruption...

A Brief Review of Emika's 2024 Album, "HAZE."

I have decided, contrary to the original concept of this publication, to write an album review. I was anticipating the release of Emika’s HAZE months in advance. Additionally, I believe the album’s release makes for an interesting opportunity to diverge from the topic of Black Metal and talk about an artist in another genre I am interested in. Emika is, without a doubt, one of my favorite musicians actively creating new music. Emika’s music has always had such a unique and evocative quality that resonates with me on deep level. I have described her sound previously as “Sounds/transmissions from a surreal utopia just outside my grasp.” The aesthetic soundscapes she has woven over the past ten years have been consistent and interesting in a way that rivals any Black Metal band I would hold in equal regard. This album has been a highly anticipated moment for me, a return to the more traditional electronic songwriting that fascinated me with her music over ten years ago. I see HAZE as the true successor to 2018’s Falling In Love With Sadness, taking the sound in a new, albeit familiar direction. There is an evolution of atmosphere and introspection that occurs across HAZE’s sixteen tracks, incorporating new elements that synthesize beautifully with Emika’s characteristic sound. The result is a deliciously surreal listening experience… sounds like a heavy, fuzzy blanket. Songs and ambient sequences that would quietly accompany one through a warm and comfortable summer dream…

HAZE is a record that is effortless easy for me to “opt into.” There is a fantasy of escape and utopia that is immediately palpable, arriving like a pleasantly cool breeze with the album’s opener, “[star key].” This is a great opening track because it introduces the listener to the kinds of compositions Emika will be throwing at us on HAZE, and the new influences present therein. In the album’s description, Emika lists Burial as a possible influence. The syncopated dubstep-esque beat and humming bass that guides the album’s opener immediately hearken back to aspects of Burial’s Untrue. The beats are something unique to this album, it is a shift in the motion and energy of Emika’s songwriting that I immediately latched onto. There are not a ton of vocals on HAZE, especially when compared to previous albums. However, Emika makes the wise decision on “[star key]” to give us a taste of the style of spaced-out, dreamy, and distant voice that will appear throughout the album.

Something that fascinates me about HAZE is how front-loaded the album is. The first fifteen minutes of the album are taken up by the first three tracks alone. “[star key],” “Harmony,” and the title track, “Haze,” also make up the bulk of the more traditionally structured songs on HAZE. These three introductory songs establish the three main musical motifs that Emika chooses to explore on HAZE: descending melodies played across synths and piano, echoing syncopated beats, and a buzzing bassline that animates the musical parts rushing above it. When taken together, they give the album a distinct three-dimensional feel with three unique voices. These three components become expected; I began to anticipate the arrival of each part while noticing the subtle nuances of how Emika changes the sounds on each subsequent track.  

Emika’s ethereal, neo-classical piano work has been nearly perfected on this album. I believe Emika has made the piano the primary compositional force on this album. The synths and ambient effects I more readily recognize from previous albums are still present, but I can imagine many of these songs emerging from an initial burst of inspiration sitting behind ivory keys. The presence of the “Haze (Piano)” track late in the second half of the album is further evidence of this.

The second half of this sixteen-track album is where things get really interesting. HAZE makes a distinct shift in pace with “Skip,” an incredibly minimalistic minute-long interlude that deconstructs the sound of the first three tracks. It is a moment where the three parts of melody, rhythm, and bass are slowly separated and boiled off to give way to the fifth track, “Ache.” Track five of HAZE is where the future-garage, dubstep beat takes over. There is a motion and magnitude to the swiveling beat that was absent on previous tracks, I believe the focus is being placed on the album’s heartbeat before transitioning into one of my favorite tracks on the album, “Writer.” Here is a moment where Emika completely gives herself over to the piano, composing a moody piece that sounds like a love song composed in a floating, zero-gravity chamber made of crystal and gold… Lonely piano keys dancing underneath intensely layered, breathy voices that echo through your mind. I want to live inside this song, inhabit the perfect satellite world she transported me to in this track.  

“Smoke” is the song Emika chooses to break us out of the stupor of “Writer.” It sounds comparatively cold, returning to the formula laid out by the initial three tracks. Without “Smoke” however, I believe I could have easily gotten lost in this album. There are moments on this song that felt like they had been ripped from earlier releases, specifically Dva. There is a nostalgia to this track that I feel, being totally instrumental is also an interesting contrast from the previous track. Listening back, “Smoke” is the beginning of an instrumental portion of the album, with the next several tracks digging more into the interplay between the instrumental elements present.

“Waltz,” “4/4,” and “Film” are beautiful, interesting tracks. They feel like quick instrumental vignettes, averaging three minutes in length but without any vocals they feel much shorter. “Waltz” and “4/4” open similarly to “Writer,” albeit with a much more distorted piano sound. Then, the bass and drums drops in and set the pace for each song. The electronic drum sound is much colder here, more mechanical. Especially on “Waltz,” the surreal piano part sharply contrasts the metal-on-metal rolling drum track that pulses and sizzles with the bassline. On “Film” however, the synths take the initiative, pushing the song forward with a utopian, surreal tone as a tide of ebbing-and-flowing ambient noise that rushes around the listener like a warm pink sea. All of these tracks experiment with the interplay between the three primary elements of the music, before they all return on the eleventh track, “Low End.”

“Low End” is an intense track. Cold-opening with a haunting descent on piano bolstered by a deep, rumbling bass tone that creeps up from the depths. The drum track sounds like something straight off an early-2000’s Burial release, lending the song an additional moody undertone. Additionally, there are moments when the piano at the forefront of the song’s sound ascends… which is another reason why this track feels particularly ominous at times. “Low End” feels like a real evolution of Emika’s sound off of 2018’s Falling In Love With Sadness. It is an icy, melodramatic shift in the record, and I believe “Low End” is where the true climax of HAZE lies before the album shifts towards the high-minded and ambience focused tracks of the conclusion.

“Shards” is a quick, two-minute rhythmic track that diffuses most of the tension built up from “Low End.” The drum track is quick and punchy, the edges of the sound have been grinded down from the previous several tracks. Behind the drum tracks lies the ambience of the song, arriving in a deeply fractured hazy synth soundscape that seems to vacillate in and out of song as the drum track carries on like some immortal future machine. There is a point on the song where the rhythm vanishes, like a moment of reflection amidst an oasis of static.

Coming hot off the heels of “Shards” is a seventeen-second track titled “Rain.” As I have matured as an “ambient music” listener, tracks like this really pique my interest. They are extremely intentional moments on an album that usually point towards… something. My main frustration here is, lacking a physical copy of HAZE for the time being, I cannot experience “Rain” as a seamless part of the album… which really harms its impact and emphasizes the importance of buying physical media from an independent artist like Emika.

https://emikarecords.bandcamp.com/merch

The ending of HAZE is something truly special. I love good endings, and there is a careful balance artists must strike when crafting a satisfying ending. HAZE’s conclusion begins with “Lull,” further deescalating the album off the heels of “Rain.” This is pure ambience, a track without any real rhythm or direction. Like the more atmospheric moments on “Shards,” “Lull” is an uninterrupted minute of contemplation accompanied by a pleasant, gently pattering white noise. For me, it is a welcome moment of disassociation after such an emotional and evocative listening experience. Like a quiet moment in the aftermath of a loud party, collecting emotions and processing the interactions that occurred throughout the night… “Haze (Piano)” beautifully builds off this moment by running back through a leitmotif of the title track, stripped down to a concise moment of the same evocative piano-work that has driven the high-points of this album for me. Emika has proven the piano is her instrument, her final “chamber” performance is a reminder of such.

The album closes with a track titled “Traum,” a perfect conclusion to a perfectly dreamy album experience. This track buried me, it reverberated through my bones and the space between my ears felt like a tuning fork resonating with the vibrations. This was the moment that cemented HAZE’s superior conclusion, coming as the well-earned payoff and the moment where the album faded back behind the curtain of reality. Back into the dream where these sounds originated. I was left in silence, drinking in the final moments of music and processing the thoughts and emotions that rushed through my mind during the album’s forty-minute runtime. That, to me, is the hallmark of a good album. Something that leaves me in a moment of silent contemplation.

HAZE is an incredibly satisfying return to the electronic sounds that interested me in her music in the beginning. This album has a unified, seamless sound that paints a series of aural paintings that all fall perfectly into the Emika catalogue. HAZE is a clear demonstration of Emika’s developed skill on piano, in addition to her ability to seamlessly weave neo-classical scales and modes into more traditional European electronic musical forms. I would highly recommend this album to those interested in more atmospheric, high-concept electronic music. HAZE is an incredibly immersive experience when listening at high volumes, and I am confident this album will serve as an excellent introduction to Emika’s sound and general aesthetic for those unfamiliar.