“Berlin” by Fiona Brice

“Berlin” by Fiona Brice is Northern Transmissions' 'Song of the Day'.

Fiona Brice has announced the upcoming release of her solo debut Postcards From, due out June 3rd via Bella Union. Her career already spans orchestral arrangements for artists John Grant, Anna Calvi, Midlake, Placebo, Vashti Bunyan and Jarvis Cocker, scores for concert performances by Roy Harper and Gemma Ray, and violin performances for the likes of Kanye West, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Katherine Jenkins, and Gorillaz. In honor of the album’s announcement Brice has shared the first cut “Berlin”.

“I was so busy sustaining a living from music, and with other people’s music, I forgot to prioritize my own work, and lost sight of its potential,” Brice explains. “Though I didn’t set out to make an album. The pieces were written over five years, but they started to hang together.”

With the exception of “Tokyo” (inspired by a National Geographic article after Brice had visited the city), the tracks were conceived in the places they’re named after. Though Brice refers to the tracks as “musical selfies” of her mood at the time, she concedes that some psycho-geographical influence has seeped in. For example, she hears, “warmth, space and light” in (the Thai island of) “Koh Yao Noi” while “St Petersburg” “sounds a little menacing, with a certain grandeur too. But if “Glastonbury” has an upbeat, swirling energy, it’s the landlines and pagan side that entrances Brice rather than the festival. She describes Postcards From as “one foot in the classical world and one in rock, but if anything, it’s more like film music. Either way, it represents me well.”

Postcards From tracklisting:

1. Berlin

2. Paris

3. Glastonbury

4. Dallas

5. Antwerp

6. Verona

7. St Petersburg

8. Koh Yao Noi

9. Tokyo

10. Denton

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