Disconcerting but bewitching debut from Berlin-based siren.
There’s something disturbing about 3 Hours, the opening track to Emika’s impressive eponymous debut album. Recalling The Crystals’ He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss), its chorus advises whoever she’s addressing to "Hit me when you wanna and I’ll take the blame / Hit me and I guarantee you’ll feel the same / Hit me if you think that it will help the pain / Hit me, hit me, hit me, hit me anyway." Delivered in a deadened voice, its verse muttered and almost inaudible so that it’s hard to comprehend the context of this worrying but hopefully metaphorical instruction, it sets an unsettling tone, and it’s one that’s maintained throughout the dozen songs here.