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# Q&A with Atka
- URL: https://www.glamglare.com/music/qa-with-atka/
- Published: 2023-11-03T09:49:46.000Z
- Updated: 2024-07-28T16:40:29.000Z
- Author: Oliver Bouchard
- Tags: Music, #wordpress, #Import 2024-07-26 07:44, Q&A

Today, the London-based singer/songwriter **[Atka](https://glamglare.com/artist/atka?ref=glamglare.com)**, née Sarah Neumann, releases her debut record *[The Eye Against the Ashen Sky](https://glamglare.com/album/atka-the-eye-against-the-ashen-sky?ref=glamglare.com)*. Listen to the EP below and read on about the fascinating stories behind the music and the artist.

***Your debut EP [The Eye Against the Ashen Sky](https://glamglare.com/album/atka-the-eye-against-the-ashen-sky?ref=glamglare.com) was released today, but you have been writing and producing music for a long time. What inspired you to start with music? Do you remember the first song you wrote?***

I think what inspired me most was the feeling of defeat. Before the pandemic I played a few shows at uni, where I received a lot of support and then when I finished my undergrad I just couldn’t find a job, despite having very good grades and solid work experience. So then I realized that it literally doesn’t matter what I do in this economic climate. Most things will require a ridiculous amount of unpaid labor, most will be unfair, most either exploitative or exploiting – so I might as well pursue the thing I love most and the thing that I was always told I couldn’t do. I felt like nothing was possible so I might as well do the impossible – and throw my whole body into it with full force. I had nothing to lose had I?  
The first song I wrote was “Child Of Rage” – chronologically the EP goes from back to front. I spent a whole summer writing music for 8 hours every day like a maniac and that was the first song I ended up being happy with – it felt huge. Music at that time felt like the only thing in my life that I could have control over. Something that no matter the circumstances couldn’t be taken away from me.

**What triggered the desire to publish your music and release an EP?**

I spent most of my early twenties absorbing as much art as I could – books, philosophy, music – I felt like I missed out on so much living in small town East-Germany and always wanting to fit in. I mostly spent my time in our backyard making up magical worlds convinced I was a fairy haha. But jokes aside, I felt so behind when I moved to London and spent a lot of time “catching up”. However, at one point I just got tired of it all and decided that I was ready to grow in public. I stopped being afraid of being a work in progress.

***You have been working in politics and film and obtained a master’s degree in philosophy. How does writing and releasing music fit in?*** 

I think it is natural that when you absorb so much knowledge, books and theory, there have to be moments of release and expression. A lot of the things I do and am interested in are very intellectually driven. With my head up in the air all the time, I sometimes have a hard time being in my body. Music brings me back into my body and lets me access the parts of me that I can not intellectualize. Most of the time these latent parts are a lot more revealing of what’s going on with me and the world around me, then anything I could possibly conceptualize intellectually. All of my lyrics start as gibberish. I enter a kind of trance-like state and just start mumbling any words that come to me and usually a theme arises. Often I go back into my phone notes or look at my philosophy essays or the things I write in my notebook and start drawing the lines – and suddenly all the different things I have been writing about, make sense – not because I thought about it some more, but because I just stopped and listened for a second.

![Atka](https://storage.ghost.io/c/18/0d/180d05b3-e8e5-483a-b156-c2596ebfc2ae/content/images/wordpress/2023/11/atka_JSD_.jpg)

***You collaborated with Jung Kim (Gang of Youths) for the EP. How did this come together?***

We had plans of collaborating for quite some time. Jung wanted to explore his production skills outside of Gang’s projects and has been a big fan of the songs I had written and shown him for a few years. And I was looking for someone to help me craft the complex soundscapes I had been envisioning for the tracks. I knew Jung would be perfect for this. He is a wizard on Eurorack, guitar and synthesizer and a talented engineer, whereas I had the vision for composition, structure and arrangement – as co-producers we filled each other’s gaps perfectly. It took some time and encouragement at the start because Jung was very humble about his abilities as a producer, but he eventually agreed. I was waitressing at the time and went straight from my shift at London Bridge to Jungs home studio in South-East London every day and then came back home, to the North-East, around midnight. I basically did a full on London-city tour each day and ran on very little sleep. It was mad. I was working on new ideas either on the bus and train or running to work, while singing a harmony or chord progression into my phone. I think we both learned so much in those 2 months of recording early this year and we really pushed each other.

***The Eye Against the Ashen Sky draws inspiration from renowned philosophers’ and artists’ work, but it is also rooted in personal experiences. Can you provide a brief summary of the concepts and themes explored in the four songs featured on the EP?***

Because the songs were written at the same time as I was writing my masters thesis, they also feature very similar themes. There I explored how we can perceive non-animated objects as looking at us, for example a tree, a chair etc. The question arose from a late night walk I took in St. Johns Wood, where I felt as if the trees were gazing at me. I just couldn’t shake it off. And at the same time I recognized that this was a period in my life were I felt extremely alienated fom myself, constantly determined by my environment and surroundings. I felt like the gaze of this environmental machine, that I find so hard to put into words, was eating me alive. So I became interested in this relationship between the experience of being perceived, when no one is watching, and the feeling of alienation. I read a lot of Jean Paul Sartre’s work for my thesis, but also Deleuze and Marx and found similar themes in their work. I was fascinated by it.  
So the songs deal with the theme of experiencing oneself constantly and only as a reflection of oneself, but never as the true self. And they explore the quest of finding the way back into one’s body. I could go on and on about the themes in the EP, there’s a lot of repetition, a lot of recurring metaphors of fog and smoke, many references and everything is in there for a reason, because it all came out when I deeply listened to myself. There is references to Louis Bourgeouis, which to some might reveal a bit more about the subject matters I am talking about. But everything you need to know is in the music.

![Atka](https://storage.ghost.io/c/18/0d/180d05b3-e8e5-483a-b156-c2596ebfc2ae/content/images/wordpress/2023/11/atka_press_JSD.jpg)

****Your songs feature complex sounds. Do you start with a simple idea and go from there, or do you have the entire composition in mind?**

I sometimes wish I was more of an abstract artist, but I very much come from a singer-sogwriter kind of background, having listened to loads of folk music. So I usually write my songs on guitar first in their very classic structure, but I never pre-plan or map out a structure. Writing songs to me always needs to involve elements of surprise and uncertainty. I think only when you open yourself up to really play, can creativity flow free. Often it is a chord-progression that I try out randomly, that feels special to me and then I continue to play with chords until I find the next thing that feels magical and that’s how things build up and with time become a whole piece of work. Time and patience are key elements though. Sometimes I would sit for 2 or 3 hours just trying out different instruments, plug-ins, samples and rhythms until the right thing comes to me. However, even though I don’t have an entire composition in mind, I usually know what a song is missing – I can best describe it in terms of color, texture, weight and feeling, which might sound very strange and esoteric. And I have a few idea I sometimes have my own annotation system that gives those descriptions more form and helps me communicate with my collaborators. But to sum it up, the situation is often: This is the next thing the track needs, now let’s go and play until we create it.

***Do you have plans to perform live?***

Yes there are some very exciting things ahead! I will be supporting the iconic Lucrecia Dalt at her London show on the 07\. November. I am a huge fan of her work and have a lot of respect for her, so it’s quite surreal that one of my first gigs as Atka is opening for her. I’ll also be playing a release show at The Waiting Room on the 28\. November and am slowly starting to plan some international shows, we’ll see.

***After the EP release, what is next for Atka?***

You’ll find me in the rehearsal room with my mates getting everything ready for the live shows. I really want to put on a whole experience and transport people into a different world. And then I want to finish writing my new material that I started sketching this year and get it into a studio to start crafting the soundscapes. I would also love to play some support shows and get in the rhythm of playing more regularly. I’ll see what the world reveals to me and am open for surprises!

***Thank you, Sarah, for the deep insight into your music. We are looking forward to hearing more music from you.***