Sienná’s EMA does not seem much like a typical electronic album but rather a series of moments which have been directly translated from the natural world into sound. Over the course of nine tracks, the artist, who was born in Kyoto and now lives in Oslo, moves easily from cinematic electronics to ambient textures, drum & bass, glitch and influences from Japanese traditional music, without settling down into a usual genre or structure. The opening track, “Be A Seeker, Believer”, clearly shows this way of working by combining a broad electronic atmosphere with a message about resilience and self-belief, and “Your Fact, My Fact” carries on the album’s examination of how different points of view can coexist in the same world.
As the album progresses through the tracks “Ema”, “Aenaria” and “369 (Miroku)”, it becomes more and more immersive, with Sienná giving equal importance to texture, rhythm and atmosphere as to conventional melody. The song “Finding Inner Sanctuary” is especially in tune with the album’s link to nature and internal reflection, and “The Majestic” provides another cinematic aspect to the experience. Instead of constructing her songs on typical pop structures, Sienná uses what she calls image-to-sound synthesis, turning the impressions she has obtained from walking in places like Kyoto’s Kibune valley and Ischia into music. This process is what gives *EMA* an organic feel, even though the sounds themselves are completely electronic.
The last two tracks, ‘A Messenger’ and ‘From Here to Where You Are’, lead the album to a reflective close and underline its themes of connection, movement and communication between the inner self and the external world. There is a striking contradiction at the core of *EMA*: although Sienná makes use of digital synthesis she deliberately adopts the imperfect and unpredictable characteristics which can be lost in highly controlled production. Because of her long-held ‘no rules’ approach the album is able to occupy a comfortable position within the realms of ambient, experimental, cinematic and Japanese-inspired electronic music without having to settle on a single identity. Since the release of *Wa-Kei-Sei-Jyaku*, *EMA* appears to be another move into Sienná’s unique cross-cultural musical universe — a universe built more on discovery than on convention.
On EMA Sienná converts impressions from nature into sound and thus produces an electronic world in which technology and imperfection can exist together in a beautiful way.
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