emiliana torrini: tookah

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. “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 every- thing being possible, when you feel happy, thankful and when you live from love. I call it Tookah.” Emiliana Torrini