Discography: Emma Dawkins
Today Makeit-loud.com takes a look at the iconic music of Emma Dawkins.
10 years ago I was in London to attend the launch of Kafka Tamura’s debut album ‘Nothing to Everyone’. Fronting the Anglo-German three-piece band was Southampton born Emma Dawkins. Emma’s captivating lyrics and enigmatic live performance made the band an essential part of the late noughties music scene.
So what is it about Emma Dawkins music that makes it so captivating? Well, before Taylor Swift there was Emma Dawkins. Taylor Swift may have turned confessional pop into a national anthem, but Emma Dawkins was a beat ahead of her.
Still a teenager during her time in Kafka Tamura, Dawkins was able to channel an acute sense of melancholy and wrap it around sumptuous vibes. Her songs had gravitas and emotional intensity. Take a listen to tracks such as ‘No Hope’ and ‘Somewhere Else’ and you’ll find yourself feeling something you can’t quite put your finger on. Maybe it’s a sense of nostalgia or simply a tug on your heart strings, but I guarantee you’ll feel something that will stop you in your tracks.
Kafka Tamura toured extensively between 2015 and 2018, and built a significant fan base across Europe. In October 2019 the band released ‘Berlin’, an EP of five original songs and a cover of Britney Spears ‘Toxic’. Sadly, this was to be the band’s last musical release, but the enduring success of Kafka Tamura remains – the band have racked up more than 22 million streams on Spotify.
By the age of 19 Dawkins had moved from England to Germany and was an in-demand songwriter, as well as an accomplished performer. By the age of 23, Emma Dawkins was releasing music under her own name. The first song, ‘Amateur Pop’ dropped in November 2020. It built on the legacy of Kafka Tamura, but had a maturity to it that came from experiencing the ups and downs of life. Lyrically complex and set to an electro pop beat it enhanced Dawkins reputation as a songwriter and musician. In May the following year Emma Dawkins released ‘Pick It Up’, which further cemented her standing as a fine solo artist.
For all her success Dawkins still had a restlessness about her, and needed a different creative avenue to express herself. By 2024 Dawkins had become an accomplished music Producer and had built her own recording studio, and it was in this space that she launched TANZFLUT. Her debut single ‘show me the way’ was released almost 3 years to the day after ‘Pick It Up’. Now in full control of writing, recording and studio production Dawkins was free to express herself in a whole new way.
Emma Dawkins continues to write and produce music in her studio, and mentor’s other artists who are at the early stages of their musical career. With a wealth of experience and an insane ability to write beautiful, poetic, danceable songs, we can’t wait to see what comes next.
The banks of the Rhine River may be different from those of the Solent where Dawkins grew up, but where a river flows there’s always the chance of a flood. In Emma Dawkins case – a dance flood.
MakeIt-Loud 