Monika

Monika is the twelfth studio album by British recording artist Alesha. It was independently released by Holy Trinity Entertainment for free streaming on 27 August 2021, followed by an international retail release distributed by Fusion Records on 10 September 2021. The album was produced with Algerian-French record producer Henri Mohammed, who collaborated with Alesha on her previous album Visible Light (2020). Unlike its predecessor, an optimistic dance album inspired by disco and house music, Monika features a foreboding and atmospheric tone in terms of musical and lyrical direction.

The concept album criticizes contemporary policies of the world's governments by presenting a dystopian, technocratic vision. Its songs explore themes frequently found in works of science fiction, including artificial intelligence, corporate power, and the simulation hypothesis. Alesha said the album was inspired by "late capitalism, extreme wealth, and Big Tech." Musically, Monika has been described as electronica and avant-pop, drawing influences from such diverse subgenres as industrial, nu-metal, progressive house, and trance.

The album's release on an eponymous domain was accompanied by a "virtual portal" featuring anime-inspired lyric videos, minigames, short narratives, and a distinct visual identity. The retail release was accompanied by a 46-minute narrative film project also titled Monika. Alesha later released a Monika fan zine.

Preceded by "Mortal", the album was both a critical and commercial success. It shifted 150,000 units in its debut tracking week (the best first-week sales of Alesha's career) and spent two weeks at number one. Alesha released two further singles from the album, "Suck My Soul" and "Upswing".

Background
In 2020, Alesha released Visible Light, her first studio album in four years. She collaborated with Algerian-French producer and DJ Henri Mohammed; Alesha had not worked with another producer since Shell Ruin on 2009's Bigger Than God. In a January 2021 interview with Madame Figaro, Alesha expressed that she and Mohammed had continued to work on material for a new release. Alesha began work on the album's lyrical concepts, attempting to break away from her typical approach. She drew inspiration from her concern at the state of affairs in the world and at what she envisioned as the most powerful countries' political and social directions.

Alesha had been exploring the themes presented in Monika for a decade before its production. She previously toyed with dystopian themes in the form of her 2009 album Bigger Than God, particularly on songs like "Apocalypse City", "Minutes to Midnight" and "Witching Hour". In 2010, Alesha conceptualized an "electro-pop-opera" inspired by the film Blade Runner (1982) but only one song emerged from the canceled sessions. The political nature of Monika is also reminiscent of Alesha's 2016 album The White Album, which addressed climate change, immigration, and the impact of electoral choices made in the United Kingdom and United States.

Recording and production
Monika is co-producer Henri Mohammed's second album with Alesha. The two recorded most of Monika at Alesha's in-home recording studio on an estate near Paris, France. With no concise vision yet to reference, they experimented on Mohammed's music sequencer. Alesha and Mohammed ultimately imagined an album rooted in science fiction and electronic music.

Lead single "Mortal" was the first song recorded for the album, written from the perspective of an artificially intelligent humanoid. After writing "Mortal", Alesha actively made the decision to forgo a linear narrative or concept. Instead, she and Mohammed completed Monika on a song-by-song basis. "Controller" and "Upswing" were the second and third songs finished for the record, at which point production came to a standstill due to writer's block. Alesha credited "Suck My Soul" as a turning point in the album's conception.

Music and lyrics
Monika is a notable departure from Alesha's previous work, and has been described as her most "adventurous" project. The album's 13 tracks — 10 songs and three interludes — contain elements of several different types of electronic music, including industrial, nu-metal, progressive house, and trance.

"Mortal", a techno-pop song, opens the album. "Controller" is notable for its slow, droning synths and cascading percussive elements. "Suck My Soul". The interlude "The Boot". "God from Her". "Upswing". "Intricate Dancer". "Mountaintops". "Destroy". "Artificial Lamb". "Conduit". "Timelines". "(Remember Me)".

Film
 Once Monika took definite form, Alesha felt the completed work exuded a "cinematic" quality and only then retroactively applied a loose narrative for the Monika film directed by Ridley Scott. The 46-minute film premiered on September 11, 2021 to accompany the availability of the album's physical formats; its HBO premiere logged 812,000 viewers. The film was also simultaneously released to streaming service HBO Max and Holy Trinity Entertainment's own subscription-based platform HTTV.

The short film builds on the themes presented by the album, forming a science-fiction narrative around the humanoid narrator of "Mortal". Alesha incorporated every song from the album into the movie, sometimes in abbreviated versions.

Title and artwork
In August 2021, Alesha announced the name of the album to be Monika. She explained that Monika is not an alter ego, and clarified that she named the album Monika as a way of separating it from herself. Alesha later realized the name could also be a play on the word "moniker". She told Pitchfork that the name Monika came to her in a dream after she had considered titling the album after a person's name. Alesha settled on the name upon realizing the connection to the city of Monica depicted in the avant-garde animated series Aeon Flux. The "Project Monika" tagline used in promotion was inspired by Project MKUltra, the code name given to an illegal program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The title, as well as "Project Monika" and the concept of the song "Mortal", quickly drew comparisons to ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doki_Doki_Literature_Club! Doki Doki Literature Club!]''. The visual novel features a main antagonist named Monika, who is revealed to be a self-aware video game character that manipulates the game's code after gaining sentience. Alesha commented that she was unaware of the similarities. Monika also drew attention from Monika Perez.

Art for the album and its accompanying virtual world was influenced by Japanese manga, modern video game concept art, Surrealism, and Rick Guidice's 1970s artistic renderings of retrofuturistic space colonies for NASA. Critics also noted heavy cyberpunk references. Alesha drew inspiration from classic works of science fiction such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, as well as Denis Villeneuve's 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049. Accordingly, neon lighting and the Japanese writing system work as a visual motif. Alesha was criticized by a column in Vox for echoing the idea of Yellow Peril, as the presence of Asian culture in science fiction works are often tied to "the racist terror of alien cultures […] and the belief that the West will be overpowered and enveloped, by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East."

Release and promotion
While work continued on the album, Alesha hinted in an interview that it was "part of a bigger picture of a number of things I'm working on." The album was first released on August 27, 2021, housed exclusively at the domain projectmonika.com. The website was dubbed a "virtual portal" that featured minigames, short narratives, and a distinct visual identity. Throughout the following weeks, the website was iteratively updated to include unique visualizers for each song and downloadable stems (allowing for fanmade remixes to be uploaded later).

Alesha partnered with Japanese animation studio Orange to produce lyric videos for the entire album. Each of the 3D anime-inspired videos depict a unique version of Monika in a different setting and storyline, but all of them end with Monika destroying everything around her to achieve liberation.

Singles
"Mortal" was released as the album's lead single on 6 August 2021, the same day that its music video premiered. Noted filmmaker Ridley Scott directed the video, which chronicles parallel timelines at a facility that formerly mass produced highly-intelligent humanoids.

"Suck My Soul"

"Upswing"

Track listing
All lyrics written by Alesha; all music composed by Alesha and Henri Mohammed.


 * 1) "Mortal"
 * 2) "Controller"
 * 3) "Suck My Soul"
 * 4) "The Boot" (Interlude)
 * 5) "God from Her"
 * 6) "Upswing"
 * 7) "Intricate Dancer" (Interlude)
 * 8) "Mountaintops"
 * 9) "Destroy"
 * 10) "Artificial Lamb" (Interlude)
 * 11) "Conduit"
 * 12) "Timelines"
 * 13) "(Remember Me)"