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Agnes Obel

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Agnes Obel marks her long-awaited return with 'The Meaning of Flowers'

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;The world created by Agnes Obel has that same magical realism that writer Angela Carter tapped into: beautifully unsettling. Feet in the forest, head in the stars.&rdquo;
Joyzine, on&nbsp;Myopia
The Danish-born, Berlin-based artist continues to defy genres across 12 atmospheric and eclectic tracks
The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;considers how new life remakes everything &ndash; the body, the mind, the self and one&rsquo;s sense of connection to the wider world
Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer&nbsp;Agnes Obel&nbsp;announces her new studio album &ndash; a follow-up to the widely acclaimed&nbsp;Myopia&nbsp;(2020).&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;is woven together from different strands of thought and inspiration by one of the most curious minds in contemporary music today. Through its 12 tracks, Obel explores the heightened sense of interconnection with all living things she experienced during pregnancy and, among other themes, the significance of birth, growth and metamorphosis in the natural world. Her new music draws on a broad range of sources, from the poetry of Enheduanna (the world&rsquo;s first named author) and the ideas of philosophers Hannah Arendt and Emanuele Coccia, to the Danish pop scene of the 80s and 90s.
Written, recorded, arranged and produced by Obel in her own studio in Berlin,&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;features Agnes herself on vocals (some pitch-shifted), piano, keys, synths and samples. Guest musicians join her on violin, viola, cello, bass, lap steel, harmonium, flute, sax, percussion and backing vocals. The album comes out on&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;&ndash; digitally, on CD and on vinyl &ndash; on&nbsp;18&nbsp;September 2026. As a taster,&nbsp;Laymelli&nbsp;is available to stream and download from&nbsp;21&nbsp;August.
Since recording&nbsp;Myopia, Obel has given birth to her first child.&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;reflects the emotional impact of motherhood, Obel&rsquo;s intellectual interest in the subject &ndash; notably Arendt&rsquo;s concept of natality, &ldquo;understood as the human capacity for new beginnings&rdquo; &ndash; and the fact that the temporarily altered neuroplasticity of her brain took her thought and compositional processes in fresh directions.
&ldquo;I wanted to see if I could get close to the feeling of a new beginning,&rdquo; says Obel of the title track. &nbsp;&ldquo;It shows itself in the experience of interconnectedness and a new expansive feeling of love that will never end. The point when the inner monologue becomes something interactive and expansive &ndash; beyond your own life &ndash; and opens your mind to a new and richer notion of life.&rdquo;
Blood so Red&nbsp;and&nbsp;Gemini&nbsp;emerged as Obel was &ldquo;playing around&rdquo; with rhythms, piano and voice.&nbsp;Blood so Red&nbsp;came from her reading of Enheduanna&rsquo;s hymns to Inanna &ndash; goddess of childbirth, love, sex, song and war &ndash; whose presence &ldquo;made its way into the song, lifting up my own epiphanies on childbirth and the laws of the body and these experiences outside of language that link us across time and space&rdquo;.&nbsp;Gemini&nbsp;and&nbsp;Laymelli&nbsp;too were inspired by Enheduanna, but also by Obel&rsquo;s awareness of a complex universe &ldquo;held together by the beauty and power of life and metamorphosis&rdquo;. She drew on Coccia&rsquo;s&nbsp;Life of Plants&nbsp;and&nbsp;Metamorphoses&nbsp;for the imagery of seeds and the life cycle of a butterfly.
There are other influences here too, including 70s movie scores in&nbsp;Don&rsquo;t Look Down&nbsp;and Danish pop in&nbsp;Never Been: &ldquo;In the 80s pop song world, to love was to be free and who you are unapologetically.&rdquo; And Obel employs a joyful combination of timbres in&nbsp;Tangerine, the only instrumental track, as sax arpeggios join celesta and piano, in a &ldquo;bubbly new wondrous friendship&rdquo;.
The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;is dedicated to Obel&rsquo;s daughter: &ldquo;she who has changed me and raised me and taught me so much &ndash; and I can feel so much more awaits to be learned&rdquo;.
&nbsp;
Agnes Obel &ndash; forthcoming tour dates:
22 Aug&nbsp;&ndash; KUNST!RASEN, Bonn &middot;&nbsp;23 Aug&nbsp;&ndash; Golden Leaves Festival, Darmstadt
26 Aug&nbsp;&ndash; Openluchttheater Caprera, Bloemendaal &middot;&nbsp;27/28 Aug&nbsp;&ndash; Amsterdamse Bostheater, Amstelveen
24 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane &middot;&nbsp;26 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Hamer Hall, Melbourne
27 Sep&nbsp;&ndash; Sydney Opera House &middot;&nbsp;29 Sep &ndash; New Zealand International Convention Centre, Auckland
&nbsp;
Agnes Obel &ndash;&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers
Books and poetry read while making the album
&nbsp;
Fiction and non-fiction:
Arendt, Hannah,&nbsp;The Human Condition, 1958
Banks, Jennifer,&nbsp;Natality:&nbsp;Toward a Philosophy of Birth, 2023
Bowen-Moore, Patricia,&nbsp;Hannah Arendt&rsquo;s Philosophy of Natality, 1989
Butler, Octavia,&nbsp;Dawn, 1987
Cage, John,&nbsp;Silence: Lectures and Writings, 1961
Coccia, Emanuele,&nbsp;The Life of Plants:&nbsp;A Metaphysics of Mixture, 2019
Coccia, Emanuele,&nbsp;Metamorphoses, 2021
Jones, Lucy,&nbsp;Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood, 2023
Morton, Timothy,&nbsp;All Art Is Ecological, 2018
N&oslash;rg&aring;rd, Per,&nbsp;Artikler 1962&ndash;1982, Ivan Hansen (ed.), 1982
Rasmussen, Karl Aage,&nbsp;Musik i det tyvende &aring;rhundrede: en fort&aelig;lling, 2011
&nbsp;
Poetry:
Akbar, Kaveh (ed.),&nbsp;The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine, 2022
Christensen, Inger,&nbsp;Samlede Digte, 2009
Enheduanna,&nbsp;Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World&rsquo;s First Author, trans. Sophus Helle, 2023 (orig. c.2300 BCE)
Graham, Jorie,&nbsp;The Dream of the Unified Field, 2002
Kurtz, Ella; King, Simone; Delahunty, Claire (eds.),&nbsp;What We Carry: Poetry on Childbearing, 2021
&nbsp;
The album will be released on 18&nbsp;September 2026 &ndash;&nbsp;listen to&nbsp;Laymelli&nbsp;and pre-order the album&nbsp;<a href="http://dg.lnk.to/themeaningofflowers">here</a>

Agnes Obel announces her new digital EP: 'Live from Brooklyn'

Following the release of her fourth studio album 'Myopia'&nbsp;in 2020, Agnes Obel returns with a new four-track digital EP, 'Live from Brooklyn'. The live performances, recorded during Agnes&rsquo;s intimate National Sawdust shows in Brooklyn, New York in January 2020, feature four tracks from Myopia: &ldquo;Camera&rsquo;s Rolling&rdquo;, &ldquo;Island Of Doom&rdquo;, &ldquo;Myopia&rdquo; and &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t You Call Me&rdquo;.
Obel hopes that the release of these live tracks will provide some consolation to fans who were unable to attend her 2020 world tour after it was cut short because of COVID-19 restrictions.
&ldquo;When we played in Groningen there was this strange, eerie feeling at the venue and amongst us in the band that this would be the very last time we would play together. It was an incredible feeling &ndash; for the audience too. It sounds weird, actually, the audience were so warm and attentive, and it was like they knew they wouldn&rsquo;t go to a concert for a while,&rdquo; recalls the artist.

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. &ldquo;The albums I&rsquo;ve worked on have all required that I build a bubble of some kind in which everything becomes about the album.&rdquo; &ldquo;For me the production is intertwined with the lyrics and story behind the songs&rdquo; says Obel. This is precisely what makes her music so compelling and the same is true with Myopia. &ldquo;Paradoxically, for me I need to create my own myopia to make music.&rdquo; 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. Watch the official music video to accompany the albums opening track: Camera&rsquo;s Rolling.
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Agnes Obel announces new album Myopia

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 the single &ldquo;Island of Doom&rdquo;, ahead of the release of her anticipated new album Myopia &ndash; through Deutsche Grammophon and Blue Note in North America &ndash; on 21 February 2020. 
&ldquo;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?&rdquo; &ndash; Agnes Obel. Pre-order the album exclusively as a limited crystal clear vinyl edition exclusively available on our <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Femail.deutschegrammophon.com%2F53EL-88LR-2SA0UR-6ITYZ-1%2Fc.aspx&amp;data=02%7C01%7Crupert.wagg%40umusic.com%7C80792987302f47d79ff008d75eee7bee%7Cbbcb6b2f8c7c4e2486e46c36fed00b78%7C1%7C0%7C637082250686433678&amp;sdata=yhZaPCMsFi02hhV43wegr6W04kduE39B78JfcRFhWA4%3D&amp;reserved=0">DG Store</a>. You can also pre-order a limited CD 'Mint Pack' version as well as a standard black vinyl there too. See a <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Femail.deutschegrammophon.com%2F53EL-88LR-2SA0UR-6ITZ0-1%2Fc.aspx&amp;data=02%7C01%7Crupert.wagg%40umusic.com%7C80792987302f47d79ff008d75eee7bee%7Cbbcb6b2f8c7c4e2486e46c36fed00b78%7C1%7C0%7C637082250686438666&amp;sdata=gt%2FfffdMgPGhQAhqeVzq4pdoikCtuVtmmLLDpoCFkDo%3D&amp;reserved=0">list of all retailers and services</a> where you can pre-order or pre-save a CD, Vinyl, Download or Streaming version of this album.
Listen to the single 'Island of Doom' in audio on the streaming platform of your choice or watch it as a video <a href="https://youtu.be/R0-HVFEjOlE">here</a>.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;

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Title

THE MEANING OF FLOWERS Agnes Obel

The Meaning of Flowers

Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Agnes Obel&rsquo;s upcoming album The Meaning of Flowers is woven together from different strands of thought and inspiration. The project explores the heightened sense of interconnection with all living things she experienced during pregnancy.
A follow-up to the widely acclaimed Myopia (2020), the album reflects on birth, growth and metamorphosis in the natural world, drawing inspiration from sources ranging from the poetry of Enheduanna and the ideas of philosophers Hannah Arendt and Emanuele Coccia to Danish pop of the 80s and 90s.
Written, recorded, arranged and produced by Obel in her own studio in Berlin, the album features Obel herself on vocals, piano, keys, synths and samples, joined by guest musicians on strings, bass, lap steel, harmonium, flute, sax, percussion and backing vocals. Across its 12 tracks, the album reflects both the emotional impact of motherhood and the fresh directions in thought and composition that followed the birth of her first child. Dedicated to her daughter, the project explores what Obel describes as &ldquo;the feeling of a new beginning&rdquo; and a new, expansive sense of love and interconnectedness.
The full album will be released digitally, on CD and vinyl on 18 September. Pre-order the CD and vinyl editions in the <a href="https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/de-de/collections/agnes-obel">DG Store</a>.
Listen to a first pre-release track, Obel&rsquo;s atmospheric composition Laymelli.

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Agnes Obel, the Danish-born, Berlin-based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, returns with her highly anticipated new album,&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers.
Following the release of&nbsp;Myopia&nbsp;in 2020, this new record was written, recorded, arranged and produced entirely in Obel&rsquo;s Berlin studio. Across 12 atmospheric, genre-defying tracks,&nbsp;The Meaning of Flowers&nbsp;captures a period of profound personal and creative transformation.&nbsp;
Inspired by the birth of her first child, Obel explores themes of natality, interconnectedness and metamorphosis, reflecting on how new life reshapes the body, the mind and one&rsquo;s relationship to the wider world.
Her new music draws on a broad range of sources, from the poetry of Enheduanna (the world&rsquo;s first named author) and the ideas of philosophers Hannah Arendt and Emanuele Coccia, to the Danish pop scene of the 80s and 90s.
Shop exclusive: Pressed on 180g black vinyl, this special bundle also includes a hi-res digital download of The Meaning of Flowers, available in 44.1 kHz / 24-bit audio.

Agnes Obel - News | Deutsche Grammophon

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