Agnes Obel Myopia

“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.
For almost a decade, Agnes Obel has been one of the most independent and original artists in contemporary music.
Now Obel has returned with new music, releasing the enchanting single ‘Island of Doom’, ahead of the release of
her highly anticipated new album ‘Myopia’ – released through Deutsche Grammophon, Universal Music Group’s
prestigious Yellow Label, and Blue Note in North America, out on February 21st 2020.
Following the same principles as her previous albums (Philharmonics, Aventine and Citizen Of Glass), which Obel
completed as a one-women 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.
Although Obel’s music can often curate a monologue of modern day dystopian-esque news stories that we are all
now subject to. The contents of ‘Island of Doom’ are much more personal, she explains: “the song is made up of
pitched down piano and cello pizzicato and vocals, all choirs are pitched down and up… In my experience when
someone close to you dies it is simply impossible to comprehend that you can’t ever talk to them or reach them
somehow ever again. They are in many ways still alive because in your consciousness nothing has changed, they’re
still there with everyone else you know.”