Video: ATKA Shares New Single & Video 'Eye In The Sky'

ATKA has today released “Eye In The Sky,” another incredible offering from her upcoming debut EP The Eye Against the Ashen Sky, out November 3. Watch the video. 

Inspired by Nabokov's novel The Eye, the single "Eye In The Sky" deals with the social construction of identity in the reactions and opinions of others. It describes a kind of social paranoia, as we already find it in Philip K Dick's science fiction novel "The Eye In The Sky", after which the song is named, or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, one of Atka's favorite novels .

Blending her love for science fiction with philosophical enquiries, Atka asks how one can assert one's own identity under the gaze of others and the surveillance society, when “Big Brother is watching.” In a mediation of subjectivity and objectivity “The Eye In The Sky” explores the loss of self, determined by the mere fact that an essential part of our identity is always determined outside of us by the people around us. 

The London-based German musician, songwriter, and producer has shared two singles to date: “Desiring Machines” and the latest single “ Lenny ,” which was #1 on the latest edition of the New York Times The Amplifier newsletter and named one of the Best Songs of September by Paste Magazine .

Although Atka has been writing, producing and recording her own music for years, she has so far remained in the background of the music industry. Growing up in a tiny village in Germany, she moved to the beaches of the Gold Coast in Australia at the age of 15 and later to the snowy mountains in Squamish, Canada, before finding a home in London.

The artist, whose real name is Sarah Neumann, wrote her debut EP The Eye Against The Ashen Sky last year in London parallel to completing her master's degree in philosophy, in which she intensively studied the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre's, theory of the gaze.

Initially pursuing a career in sustainability research and politics, Atka quickly became disillusioned by the bureaucracy of the political system and instead considered going into filmmaking. A few self-directed short films, runner-and costume assistant jobs later, she however returned to music as a journalist for Rolling Stone, Groove and Musikexpress and others. With her own sound however, she has only been tinkering in private – whether on her walks through St. James Park to procrastinate writing her master's thesis, on the tube on the way to Soho or in her improvised home studio in East London.

Atka comes up with ideas mostly when she is on the move. Incorporating that constant movement into her music, she wants her songs to create a cinematic feel – or how she describes it: to be “journey-esque.” A versatile musician who cites Joy Division and Kraftwerk as her most formative influences, she wrote her first song at the age of ten and later gained the attention of big names in the music scene for her poetic lyrics and unique flair for music production and composition.

On the EP, the musician now processes this academic debate through storytelling in a close, tangible manner. Here, intellectual interests and personal experiences blur into an autobiographical work about shame and paranoia. Track after track, The Eye Against The Ashen Sky meanders deeper and deeper through various manifestations of these emotional worlds to their origin in the overwhelming gaze of the Other.

The tracks were produced primarily with modular and analogue synthesizers and guitars in the South-London home studio of Jung Kim, the lead guitarist of the band Gang of Youths and Stephen Sedgwick, the trusted mixer/sound engineer of the Gorillaz, Damon Albarn and Blur mixed the record.

Photo Credit: JSD

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