The folk duo Emtidi was formed in London in 1970, where the two musicians, Dolly Holmes from Vancouver, Canada and Maik Hirschfeldt from Bavaria, Germany, met. After moving to Berlin that same year, the pair played in the city’s underground clubs and trendy pubs. Thanks to their numerous performances, they secured a record deal with the small German label Thorofon, which specialised primarily in classical and folk music. The recordings for their self-titled debut were made over two days, on 8 and 9 July 1970, at Xenophon Studio near Darmstadt, produced by the studio’s owner, Helmut König.

Maik Hirschfeldt played guitar and flute and sang, while Dolly Holmes took the lead vocals and played guitar, bouzouki and kazoo. Their first and only LP contains mainly acoustic folk music with progressive and psychedelic elements, enhanced by electronic sounds which feature even more prominently on their second album. As the record company primarily released classical music, this could have been the reason for the extremely limited print run of 500 copies. Furthermore, this album was not advertised in any way and therefore went completely unnoticed on the shelves of a handful of record stores. Not only back then but of course also incredibly rare still today, this debut album is therefore sought-after and expensive.