New York, NY (Top40 Charts) "This song was, surprisingly enough, written in a period where I was struggling with falling asleep. In the effort to find a cure I began to read about the science of sleep as well as the cultural history of sleep which led me to the ancient idea that sleep and death are familiar states and problems with sleep are linked to a fear of death. Relics of this idea are still to be found in our language today, in the way we describe both death and sleep."-Agnes Obel
For almost a decade,
Agnes Obel has been one of the most independent and original artists in contemporary music. Now she has returned with new music, releasing another enchanting single "Broken Sleep" ahead of her highly-anticipated new album Myopia, which will be released February 21 through Blue Note Records in North America, and Deutsche Grammophon in the rest of the world. The official music video to accompany "Broken Sleep" is also released today. Created by long-term collaborator and partner Alex Brüel Flagstad, the video accompanies the themes within the album perfectly and continuously follows on from the "Island Of Doom" video, which was released in October 2019.
"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?"
Following the same principles as with her previous albums (Philharmonics, Aventine and Citizen Of Glass), which she 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 luthéal 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 she conjures throughout the record.
Obel will perform a series of intimate sold-out U.S. shows in New York City and Los Angeles this month followed by a European headline tour beginning in February. Obel will join Dead Can Dance as their special guest across North
America in April and May.
