Review
Genre and Mood
Emika’s Destiny Killer is electronic music at its most shadowed: dub in its space and experimental in its shape. The feelings named here come from the critics. Ibiza Spotlight heard eerie piano chords; Spectrum Culture heard confusion and discontent. Together they make the track dark and eerie, an ending that does not resolve.
Song Summary
Destiny Killer closes DREI, the album Emika released on her own Emika Records on 4 May 2015 after writing it, reportedly, in a single two-week period and producing and mixing it herself. She described the record as being about freedom and coping with it: the madness of being alone, ambitions and insecurities, the perils of a limitless creative mind. Spectrum Culture heard this track as a statement of that theme, with dizzying electronics and interwoven lyricism standing for the confusion that artistic limits bring. It runs three minutes and 46 seconds.
Musical Breakdown
No review follows the track from start to finish, so this breakdown keeps to the two descriptions we have.
Main Section
Ibiza Spotlight’s whole description is short: a dubbed-out soundscape with eerie piano chords, a track that keeps the listener wanting more. Listen for the piano first, then for the space around it. Spectrum Culture adds the dizzying electronics and the way the words are woven into them rather than set apart.
Outro
How the track ends is not described. As the album’s last track, notice whether it closes the record or leaves it open.
Concepts in Focus
To call a track dubbed out is to borrow from dub, the Jamaican practice of rebuilding a record in the studio with echo, reverb and drop-outs. Ibiza Spotlight placed DREI in Emika’s Berlin mix of dark dub pop and electro, and on this track the dub is in the space, not the reggae.
Because Emika produced and mixed DREI herself, the mixing of that space is hers too: how loud the piano sits, how near or far the voice is placed.
In December 2017 she released an alternate version, Destiny Killer (Instrumental), on Drei (Instrumentals & A Capellas). Hearing it shows how much of the confusion Spectrum Culture describes lives in the words.
Artistic Context
Emika, born Ema Jolly in 1986, grew up in Milton Keynes, studied classical piano and composition, and moved to Berlin in 2006. After two albums for Ninja Tune she founded Emika Records, where the piano album Klavirni came out in January 2015; FACT counted DREI as her fourth album. The album opens with Emika – Battles and ends here.
Impact and Reception
Ibiza Spotlight made DREI its album of the week, and ended its review on this track. It earns its place here as a closing statement made by one person from writing to mixing. Play it last, after the rest of the album, where the album puts it.
