
Á morgun kemur út platan Tookah með Emilíönu Torrini. Hana má nú streyma hér. Hér kemur fréttatilkynning á ensku:
‘Tookah’ will be Emiliana’s fourth album and follows 2008’s fantastically recieved ‘Me And Armini’. It sees Emiliana back in the studio with her long term producer / collaborator Dan Carey. This pedigree pairing of Emiliana’s songwriting and Carey’s sonic alchemy has already combined to world beating effect when they co-wrote/produced Kylie Mynogue’s hit ‘Slow’.
‘Tookah’ is a hugely ambitious pop record -exemplified not least by first single ‘Speed of Dark’.
It was conceived and written over the course of a 4 year period and was in part informed by Emiliana having become a mother for the first time. Emiliana felt a real freedom and the inspiration to make a aspirational synth pop album recorded with a new band, she even sought out a vintage 16 Voice Oberheim Synthesiser to be used on the recordings. Some additional writing contributions on the album came from band members Simon Bryt & Ian Kellett both of whom have played with Emliana throughout the years.
Title track ‘Tookah’ refers to a central notion of the album, ‘Tookah’ (a word of Emiliana’s own creation) is what she calls the only way to live in love, the essence of being that you are born with, the inner good and bad balanced, positive and negative, actuality, the union of self and a state of bliss.
The track ‘Home’ was inspired by the other main theme involved on the record, that of the notion of returning home to Iceland, and was conceived as an ode to her son. It was borne out of a reoccurring vision Emiliana had during the run up to the album’s recording where she would repeatedly find herself standing by a massive frozen lake looking at a forest which she walked towards with a sense of trying to get home. But once in the forest she would feel lost, feeling acutely the sounds of the forest as peaceful, like a quiet room, beautiful, but then fireworks would start in the sky which turned into deep sea creatures, like neon jellyfish, swimming across the sky, she would then follow these with the sense that they were guiding her home. It was this vision, a celebratory, blissful theme and feeling that Emiliana would try to return to and attempt to capture within most of the album’s tracks.
Emiliana works visually with sound, whilst recording the album, the studio was filled with smoke machines and toy lasers to create this otherworldly environment and a means of escape from the everyday.
The dancing sequence in the 1987 Wim Wenders film ‘Wings Of Desire’ was a big inspiration as were Eric Satie (his old piano works), a old programme which Emiliana remembers seeing in Iceland called ‘Danish Lessons’ plus rather unexpectantly, ‘Snowflakes Are Dancing’ by Tomita (1974) the electronic classical record of Debussy interpretations.
„Tookah is when you feel yourself, the one you can always turn to. It is kind of the inner god I guess you feel when you have a feeling of everything being possible, when you feel happy, thankful and when you live from love. I call it Tookah.“ Emiliana Torrini