On 4 October Agnes Obel is to release her debut album on [PIAS] Recordings. Called, ‘Philharmonics’, the album will be preceded by the release of the ‘Riverside’ EP on 6 September. Feeling musically related to Roy Orbison, Agnes currently lives in Berlin and possesses the rare gift of a songbird’s voice, bringing to mind Ane Brun, Joanna Newsom or even Ricki Lee Jones. Play “Just So” to anyone in Germany and they’ll tell you it’s the music from the Deutsche Telekom television advertisement. It’s the kind of exposure many an artist would die for, or the kind of publicity an independent spirit might agonise over – venturing into the commercial arena. Yet isn’t it intriguing how a few bars of music can seep into our consciousness and set us off wondering where they came from?
