{"id":1531,"date":"2021-04-14T06:09:03","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T06:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uberlin.co.uk\/april-2011-page-2-of-2-uberlin\/"},"modified":"2021-04-14T06:09:03","modified_gmt":"2021-04-14T06:09:03","slug":"april-2011-page-2-of-2-uberlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uberlin.co.uk\/april-2011-page-2-of-2-uberlin\/","title":{"rendered":"April 2011 – Page 2 of 2 – \u00fcberlin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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April 10, 2011<\/abbr><\/h5>\n
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A certain magic in the air: Emika raves about Berlin<\/a><\/h3>\n

by James Glazebrook<\/span><\/h4>\n
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\"Emika\"<\/p>\n

Electronic artist Emika<\/a> cut her teeth on Bristol bass music, before moving to Berlin back in 2008. A Berghain fanatic-turned-collaborator, she recorded sounds around the club from which the resident DJs created tracks for in-house label Ostgut Ton\u2019s F\u00fcnf<\/em> compilation. She has lent her enigmatic vocals to local scenesters MyMy, Paul Frick and Tommy Four Seven, and released her own tracks on Ninja Tune \u2013 the dynamic and ethereal \u201cDrop the Other\u201d and \u201cDouble Edge\u201d, and the meditative \u201cCount Backwards\u201d. This summer, she releases another EP before her hotly anticipated debut album, and plays a handful of select gigs. I caught up with her to find out how she fell in love with Berlin in the first place.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What has it meant to you, moving to Berlin?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh my god \u2013 everything.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a decision made for my career or my music to move here. I didn\u2019t know about Berghain until maybe three months after moving here. I\u2019d never really listened to techno \u2013 I was really into drum n\u2019 bass, and dubstep and hip hop. I didn\u2019t really know anything about Berlin, and that the music culture was so interesting.<\/p>\n

So how come you ended up here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is kind of silly: I got a free flight when I upgraded my bank account!<\/p>\n

And the first night I was here, I went to Watergate. As I was leaving, this guy started talking to me \u2013 and he is now one of my best friends. I totally fell in love with him \u2013 not in a romantic way \u2013 and he took me to flea markets, took me all around the city, let me stay with him, introduced me to his friends here.<\/p>\n

So yeah, I fell in love with him, and his friends, and moved here to work as an au pair and a few months later I discovered, \u201cWOW, there\u2019s this thing called techno! I quite like techno!\u201d From there I discovered Hard Wax, the record store, and very slowly educated myself \u2013 OK, there\u2019s this scene in Detroit and this scene in Chicago\u2026 I didn\u2019t know about any of this stuff before I moved here.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so special about Berlin?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The feeling when I\u2019m here, it\u2019s much like the feeling when I first came to Berlin. When I get off the train at Warschauer Strasse, I still get the feeling of \u201cOh, I love it here!\u201d I can\u2019t explain it \u2013 I mean, when you look around you the place looks like a dump, there\u2019s dog shit everywhere, and there\u2019s graffiti everywhere and everyone\u2019s broke and everyone looks drunk half the time\u2026 I don\u2019t know what it is, there\u2019s just a certain magic in the air here.<\/p>\n