New York, NY (Top40 Charts) For almost a decade,
Agnes Obel has been one of the most independent and original producers, song-writers and performing artists in contemporary music. A truly unique and genre defying artist whom crossed the bridge between alternative and classical.
Obel returns with new music, her highly anticipated new album 'Myopia' - released through Deutsche Grammophon, Universal
Music Group's prestigious Yellow Label, and the legendary Blue Note Records in the US, is out now. Following the same principles as her previous albums (Philharmonics, Aventine and Citizen Of Glass), which Obel completed as a one-woman project in her own Berlin home studio.
"For me Myopia is an album about trust and doubt. Can you trust yourself or not? Can you trust your own judgments? Can you trust that you will do the right thing? Can you trust your instincts and what you are feeling? Or are your feelings skewed?" - Obel
Following the same principles as her previous albums (Philharmonics, Aventine and Citizen Of Glass), which Obel completed as a one-woman project in her own Berlin home studio). Obel has been under self-imposed creative isolation with the removal of all outside influences and distraction in the writing, recording and mixing process. "The albums I've worked on have all required that I build a bubble of some kind in which everything becomes about the album."
"For me the production is intertwined with the lyrics and story behind the songs" says Obel. This is precisely what makes her music so compelling and the same is true with Myopia. "Paradoxically, for me I need to create my own myopia to make music." Obel was experimenting with techniques of recording processing, warping and pitching down vocals, strings, piano, celesta and lutheal piano. Finding ways to melt these elements together to become one and twisting them in a way that you feel at home within the sound Obel conjures throughout the record.
"For me Myopia is an album about trust and doubt. Can you trust yourself or not? Can you trust your own judgments? Can you trust that you will do the right thing? Can you trust your instincts and what you are feeling? Or are your feelings skewed?" - Obel
The release of new music follows a series of four live videos filmed during one of her Sold Out shows at Brooklyn's
National Sawdust venue in January of 2020.
Produced by long-term collaborator and partner Alex Brüel Flagstad, the video for "Won't You Call Me", the beautiful album closer from this Spring's album release, accompanies the themes within the album perfectly and continuously follows on from the official videos for Island Of Doom, Broken Sleep & Camera's Rolling.
Obel (on piano and vocals), plays alongside her all-female live band: Anne Bakker (Viola, Vocals & Mellotron),
Louise Duggan (Mallet & Vocals) and Kristina Koropecki (Cello, Vocals & Organelle).
"I have treated the footage by rescanning it several times. The footage was sent through different monitors where it was re-filmed by an old tube camera. I like how the tube (in the tube camera) makes a ghostly tracking effect out of movements and the light and how the tube overall softens the image with this old TV technology that looks like a mixture between super-8 film and VHS. For me it makes a sort of nostalgic fog, that hopefully leave space for the music." - Flagstad
