JOKA is a concept album that tells the story of Gidon Carmel’s grandmother, Joka—following her experiences in Auschwitz and the years after, until her passing in Israel in 1978.
The album unfolds across eleven songs, each from the perspective of a different person who knew Joka at different stages of her life. Through their stories, the album offers a layered and personal reflection on her journey, touching on themes of survival, memory, and resilience.
Created over three years, JOKA is a collaboration between singer, writer, and producer Kyle Morton (Typhoon) and drummer, producer Gidon Carmel. Recorded between Berlin and Portland, as well as through remote sessions, the album brings together different musical influences and perspectives.
A concept album by Gidon Carmel & Kyle Morton
Out on June 12, 2026
in the words of Gidon Carmel
“Prelude“ / “Stranger on a Train – 1944“
(Jan 27, 2026)
This song is, in a way, an introduction to the story. It sets us in time and space—Gyula, the hometown of Joka.
The song opens with the mantra "Don’t worry, we’ll get back to it", sung by many voices. We wanted to create a real sense of exodus. Though we all know that most people didn’t make it out of Auschwitz, I believed (as a father myself) that this was what many parents told their children on the way to the death camps.
This line also refers to the idea of returning to one’s humanity—to being seen as a person again, not treated like an animal. Of course, when the soldier says those same words through the crack in the train door, he doesn’t mean them at all. He says them to mock the prisoners.
“Robi the Brother – 1944“ (Feb 24, 2026)
This piece is based on Robi, Joka's brother.
In March 1944, as the Nazis were rounding up the Jews of Hungary, Joka and Robi were offered a choice by their mother, Gitta.
From Gitta's memoir:
“My children, they are about to take us on a journey with an unknown end. We will be experiencing great suffering and I'm not sure we should go all the way to see the end of it. You both are smart and serious and you can make your own decision if you would rather walk that road, or end it all here. I have enough Morphine and Luminal. Without you, I do not wish to die, but with you, I'll do it with all my heart.”
Robi and Joka decided to keep living. Joka and Gitta went on to survive the camp. Robi did not. He died, likely during the winter of 1944-1945.
The song is divided into two parts. The first part is a kind of call-and-response between a Jewish male choir, almost like a prayer to Morpheus, the god of dreams. Then Morpheus responds—inviting Robi to let go, to give up, to die. We wanted to create a chaotic atmosphere, weaving in Hungarian and Jewish musical references. The second half of the song is like a camera zooming in on Robi’s death—imagined during a death march. It becomes an internal dialogue between Robi, his mother Gitta, and his sister Joka.
“Gitta the Mother – 1945“ (Apr 16, 2026)
This song is from a mother to her daughter, in the worst place on earth, at a time when nothing was safe.
The chorus refers to an actual event from the memoir, when Gitta lost Joka for one day. In the evening, Joka came back.
It was extremely difficult for me to work on this song, especially as a young father at the time, trying to imagine what Gitta must have felt.
Apparently, Gitta was a very hard person—easily angered, not especially warm—but again, very human.
The song was sung by my partner Lena Minder, which made it all the more heartbreaking for me.
“Bundy the Husband – 1956“ (May 6, 2026)
I knew Bundy well. He was a kind man, deeply loved by everyone. He used to say that his revenge on the Nazis was to rebuild a big family. He would always count how many family members he had—he even “adopted” the family of his second partner (after Joka’s death) and counted them as part of ours.
Bundy lost his entire family in the Holocaust—only he and one distant aunt survived. Despite everything, he was full of life and positivity.
This song includes parts of Bundy’s Holocaust memoir, as well as other stories—like how they escaped Budapest in 1956 and began a new life in Israel.
One detail I’ll add: At the end of the death march near Berlin, 15-year-old Bundy gave up and laid his head on the train tracks, trying to end his life. It was January 28, 1945. A farmer collecting the dead picked him up and brought him to Sachsenhausen, where he spent the final months of the war.
Then, in 2021, during the lockdown—on January 28—Bundy told the family he was giving up again. This time, he asked us all to let him go.
That story is what’s happening in the chorus of this song.
When Bundy died, I couldn’t attend the funeral due to lockdown. I just sat there and cried. I wish he could know about this project—it’s as much about him as anyone.
“Robi the Son – 1978“ (Mar 19, 2026)
Robi is Gidon’s father, Joka’s son. He was named after the brother she lost in Auschwitz.
This song, and much of the album, grew out of letters I found at my parents’ home — mostly from Joka to my father during his army service, shortly before she passed away from cancer. Reading them, and speaking with my father about that time, changed something in me. For the first time, I saw Joka not as a distant, almost mythical figure, but as a real person — a mother, a partner, someone living her everyday life, with all its tenderness and weight.
This song imagines a phone call between Joka and Robi toward the end of Joka’s life; the lyrics comprised of Robi’s half of the conversation.
“Gidon the Grandson – 2022“ (May 28, 2026)
Not much to say that the lyrics don’t already.
My son Noam was born in a hospital right by Wannsee. We had already started working on the album, and the day after his birth, I went for a walk by the lake. I realized how history loops—how we keep arriving at the same places, just in different forms.
This is a song for Joka, but also for Noam.
And, of course, for myself.
in the words of Gidon Carmel
Is it possible to remember someone you never met?
In 2018, I came across a box of letters in my parents’ basement. Most of them were written by my grandmother, Joka, to my father, Robi. There were others from my grandfather, Bundy, along with some from a few distant relatives in America.
I had never met Joka–she died of cancer in 1979, and I was born ten years later–but I had heard stories and seen her photograph in my grandfather’s house. We visited her grave once a year. I knew she had survived Auschwitz, but still I had no real sense of who she was. In reading those letters, I felt like I was getting to know her for the first time. I started remembering her.
This is where the project began. In the history of the Holocaust, the sheer scale of atrocity can make the individuals seem abstract, distant. I wanted to tell the story of my grandmother who, like anyone who has ever lived, contained an entire world inside of her.
I interviewed my father, gathered documents, photos, and anything I could find about Joka. Then I came across a memoir written by my great-grandmother, Gitta (Joka’s mother), recalling her experience during the Holocaust. I had skimmed it years earlier, but this time the text–although poorly translated from Hungarian into Hebrew–hit me deeply.
At the beginning of Gitta’s memoir, she recalled asking her children—then teenagers—if they would prefer to take morphine and end their lives before the real suffering began. It was clear at that point they would be rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. Both Joka and Robi chose to stay alive. Gitta and Joka survived the camp. Robi, like the rest of their extended family, did not.
Reading this, I was struck deeply. It was a choice in which my own existence was decided. This became one of the central themes of the album: the choice to try to keep existing, despite everything.
In 2022, I reached out to Kyle Morton from the band Typhoon, whose record Offerings–itself a meditation on memory–was part of the inspiration for this project. Initially, he signed on to engineer and produce the record but over the months (and eventually years) we spent preparing–sending demos and lyrical sketches back and forth, sharing books of history, literature, poetry, and learning more about my own family history–he became deeply involved in the project. We also, perhaps inevitably, became friends. Now Kyle has his own “memories” of my grandmother.
The story of Joka is told through the perspectives of others in her life; those close to her–her mother and brother, her husband, her son; and those whose fates only brushed briefly–a stranger on the train, a camp guard. We drew on primary source material as well as other works of history and literature–Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate; Primo Levi’s If This is a Man; Paul Celan’s Todesfugue; Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands. There is always an element of poetic license in trying to understand another human being, and even then that understanding will be utterly incomplete. We only hope to pass along a story that contains in it some small aspect of truth. A memory of someone who lived.
the artists
Gidon Carmel and Kyle Morton share a rare artistic chemistry that transcends geographical and stylistic boundaries. Born in Israel and based in Berlin for many years, Gidon Carmel is a musician, drummer, and producer guided by a continual search for new sounds and ideas. His work reflects a deep sensitivity to dynamics, texture, and space. From his studio in Berlin, he develops and records music shaped by experimentation and collaboration.
Kyle Morton is the founder, lead singer, and principal songwriter of the American indie rock band Typhoon. His music is distinguished by orchestral arrangements, poetic storytelling, and a remarkable ability to transform deeply personal narratives into universally resonant songs. Typhoon are widely regarded as one of the most distinctive voices in the American indie orchestral sound.
Their collaboration began with Joka, a concept album rooted in Carmel’s personal family history, which gained profound emotional resonance through Morton’s musical sensitivity. What started as a project of research and remembrance evolved into an intense creative partnership—one that weaves together poetry, documentary depth, and musical finesse.
Together, Carmel and Morton create music that unites biographical authenticity with artistic vision: intimate narratives carried by rhythmic precision and melodic richness. Gidon Carmel & Kyle Morton represent a form of songwriting that builds bridges—between continents, between generations, and between history and the present.
get in touch
Label: popup-records
Publishing: Schacht Musikverlage
Live: for live shows or
listening & discussion sessions
Press: Adrian Richter - adrian@popup-records.de
Radio: Lina Weber - lina@popup-records.de
Contact: Jutta Baechner - jutta@smv.de
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