Emiliana Torrini - Tookah (2013) VBR

Emiliana Torrini - Tookah

Year 2013

Tracks
1. Tookah
2. Caterpillar
3. Autumn Sun
4. Home
5. Elisabet
6. Animal Games
7. Speed Of Dark
8. Blood Red
9. When Fever Breaks


Tookah is Emiliana Torrini’s fourth album and it follows 2008’s critically acclaimed Me And Armini.
It sees Emiliana back in the studio with her long-time producer/collaborator Dan Carey.
Tookah is a hugely ambitious pop record - exemplified not least by first single “Speed of Dark”.
The word “Tookah” is a word that Emiliana made up, and is what she considers to be 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.
Tookah was conceived and written over the course of a 4 year period and was in part informed
by Emiliana becoming a mother for the first time.
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 new son. It was borne out of a
recurring vision that Emiliana had during the run up to the album’s recording. 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, and while 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 unexpectedly, “Snowflakes Are Dancing” by Tomita (1974) the electronic
classical record of Debussy interpretations.