Emmy The Great has announced
news of her new solo album April / 月音 released 9th October via Bella Union and available to
pre-order here. First single “Dandelions
/ Liminal” is a song about being OK with uncertainty, and learning to
co-exist with your own sorrow, and the sorrows of the world.

Click HERE to listen. 

“My story begins with the moon. In September 2017, I travelled to Hong
Kong from New York, where I’d lived for three years, for the Mid-Autumn
festival. I was planning to visit my parents and take some time off to write my
fourth album. I arrived in time for the full moon - Chang-E’s moon - at a time
of year when the heat breaks and the city seems alive with possibility. 

That Spring, I’d visited China and accidentally become somewhat fluent
in Cantonese again, though the goal had been to speak Mandarin. I was there for
a music residency, and had expected to feel an instant click. Instead, I
realised that Hong Kong had an identity quite separate from the Mainland, and
with my mother tongue reinstated, I was beginning to come to terms with that
identity being a part of mine. This was tough - I was born in Hong Kong but
I’ve always felt complicated about it. 

Still, that Mid-Autumn, everything felt simple. Under the guidance of
the moon, I walked the city - its neon-lit alleyways, its escalators and
mountain paths. For a brief, precious moment, I fell into synch with Hong Kong.
I felt its complex legacy and its tangled future. I felt the sorrow, alive in the
buzz of neon and the drips of air-conditioner units, of a city caught between
two destinies. It was twenty years since the Handover and the beginning of ‘One
Country, Two Systems’. Everywhere I went, I saw people seeking to define their
shared identity before it was too late. I hope some of that spirit has found
its way into the songs, which were mostly written during that time.