A year on from releasing her debut album Most of the Boys, Anglo-Norwegian singer-songwriter Sasha Siem has announced the release of a follow up mini-LP, Bird Burning, which is set to be released on 17th June via Blue Plum Records. She has also shared the album’s first track, ‘Crow,’ an epic and atmospheric track that marries Siem’s soaring and emotive vocals with clashing drums, smatterings of brass and haunting, bass-laden synths. Recorded with Valgeir Sigurðsson at his Green House Studios in Iceland, the track reflects the work of some of his other musical collaborators, including Feist and Björk. Listen below.
Bird Burning is set to be a more personal work for Siem. After deciding to learn more about her family’s roots and discovering a connection with the Sami people of Northern Scandinavia, she has created an album that is heavily influenced by nature, the landscapes of Iceland and the writing of the Sami. She explained: “The Sami don’t sing songs about things or people or places; they invoke them. So they sing a bird, rather than about or to a bird. That was a total shift in what music making was about for me, and Bird Burning is the result of that transformation.” Taking the concept of nature further, Siem also utilised what she’d learned from an essay about birds being symbolic of the different phases of the soul’s development within esoteric Medieval writing. As a result, each track on the album is named after a different bird, with the aim of creating an LP that presents a flowing love story combining the intimate and the universal.
Siem will play songs from Bird Burning and her debut album at London’s Kings Place on 11th April.
