My Heart Bleeds Melody (In Blue)

Emika presents a special electronic performance with her live vocals, inspired by her song ‘My Heart Bleeds melody’, which she wrote on a beach in Greece (2013). Totally heartbroken at the time, looking out at the horizon, unsure of how to move out of a dying relationship, she started to feel the sky connect with the water. A marriage of blue on blue. This is a collaboration with the Greek visual artis Greta commissioned by Athens Digital Arts Festival for its 21st edition Simulacra. The performance will bring together a visual exploration of the blue spectrum from dark to light immersing the audience in blue for 40 minutes of bass, rhythms melody and heartache.

Emika
Emika has her own sound and is following her own path. Since the turn of the decade she has been producing electronic and neo classical music, combining her skills as a sound designer, classically trained composer, and prolific singer-singer writer, she has released 8 critically acclaimed albums to date and works independently running her own label, Emika Records. Born in Milton Keynes, England, with a British father and Czech mother, she started making music using a 4-track cassette recorder as a young teen, combining classical piano, electronics through sampling techniques, getting her first job at her friend’s local recording studio. She later went on to study Creative Music Technology at Bath Spa University to learn the art of record production, while living in Bristol and discovering the city’s early bass music scene which would later evolve to become the now world-famous Dubstep movement. As a postgraduate student she moved overseas to Berlin to work as a Sound Designer at one of the leading global music tech companies Native Instruments, developing products for producers and DJ’s alike. She collaborated with internationally known Techno club Berghain, to record a library of field-recordings inside the club which were then used for their 5 year anniversary release ‘Fünf’ (2010). She signed her first two albums ‘Emika’ (2011) and ‘Dva’ (2013) to UK indie label Ninjatune which both received critical acclaim in the music media and personal support from BBC Radio 1’s Mary Anne Hobbs and Thom Yorke who played her music said on his BBC 6 Music programme, in 2012 saying, ‘I hope she becomes very famous’. Her bass-heavy, edgy songs with her mix of piano and sultry breathy voice, had now become her trademark. In 2015 Emika established her own imprint Emika Records and continues to develop her work in electronic and classical music, embracing the creative freedom which came with such a venture and using this to push new classical music forwards and experiment with the blueprint of being a Berlin DJ. Some of her solo piano works from her album ‘Klavirni’ (2015) have been streamed more than 17 million times on Spotify. She developed a strong connection to her fans via her social media platforms and live performances and through their support her first full symphony ‘Melanfonie’ (2017) was crowdfunded via Kickstarter where she received €25,000 from fans in a 3 month period. She was able to hire the City Of Prague’s 50-piece Philharmonic Orchestra and explore her Eastern Europe roots as inspiration for the piece. As a performer Emika takes to the stage with her piano, synths, voice and tech set up similar to her music studio. Since 2019 she has been focusing on developing her show into an immersive live experience with 360 degree dome visuals. Her show ‘If We Disappear’ has sold out multiple nights in some of the biggest planetariums in Berlin, Moscow, Hamburg, Prague, Krakow, Münster. The show received great reviews from DJ Mag, Uncut, and BE-AT.TV. Previously she has toured across the USA, China, Russia, Mexico, and Europe several times, performing at major music festivals such as Glastonbury (2016), Atlas Weekend (2019), and she was invited twice to perform at David Lynch’s club Silencio in Paris. Emika has been remixed by Marcel Dettmann, Brand Brauer Frick, Pinch, Rebekah, and has made remixes herself for St Vincent, Nina Kraviz, Len Faki, Amon Tobin and Fink. She has collaborated with Hank Shocklee from Public Enemy who executive produced her album ‘Dva’, and The Exaltics who co-produced her album ‘Falling In Love With Sadness’. Her music and voice from her song ‘Professional Loving’ were sampled by The Weeknd on his song ‘Professional’, which was performed live on Jimmy Kimmel (2013). Her music has been featured in films such as Spielmacher (2018), Bad Banks (ZDF, 2018), and the film trailer for Mission Impossible 4 as well as USA hit TV series The Blacklist (NBC, 2013) and How To Get Away With Murder (ABC, 2016) including a feature on the popular game Wipeout from Playstation. She has received chart success with her icy electronic cover of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game which reached No.2 in the USA iTunes charts and No.1 in Canada (2013). After the end of the pandemic in early 2022, she left Berlin after being a core member of it’s electronic music scene for 15 years and relocated with her young family near Schwarzwald (The Black Forest) in South Germany. She has built her own music studio and Emika Records label office surrounded by trees, and is currently working on a new symphony, creating a film for planetariums world-wide in Dolby Atmos, and music for the film Another End by Piero Messina, starring Gael Garcia Bernal (Berlinale Film Festival main competition 2024).

 

Greta

Greta is a DJ and mixed-media artist, based in Athens, GR. He holds a BA in Architecture from the
National Technical University of Athens and an MFA in Digital Arts from the Athens School of Fine
Arts. His practice develops through music performances in exhibitions and events, multi-media
installations and video-art projections, all of which he combines to model immersive
environments. He currently hosts the show “Gelatin Prime” for stegi.radio, where he invites DJs
and producers to collaborate on a sonic worldbuilding project. He has performed in various
exhibitions, festivals and events around the world, including: Qreclaim (Athens, GR), Whole –
United Queer Festival (Ferropolis open-air museum, Germany) and Waking Life (Crato, PT), among
others. He has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS
(2022).