Bryan Ferry is happy to announce a brand new album, ‘BRYAN FERRY AND HIS ORCHESTRA – BITTER-SWEET’ out November 30th.
The album, which has been inspired by Bryan’s work on the Sky Atlantic/Netflix television series ‘Babylon Berlin’ (a German period drama based on the books by Volker Kutscher set in the 1920s), takes the musical stylings from that era and puts a new twist on well loved Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry tracks including ‘While My Heart is Still Beating’, ‘Sign of the Times’, ‘Bitter Sweet’ and ‘Dance Away’. Whereas Ferry’s previous album in this genre The Jazz Age consisted of instrumentals, Bitter-Sweet includes 8 vocal tracks.
The album embraces ragtime, blues, and jazz, and whilst they evoke nostalgia, hearing beloved songs in a fresh and exciting way gives the record an edge of modernity; jazz in the 1920s was the soundtrack of popular culture – itself a modern invention and it’s almost as if we’re hearing it for the first time.
The album will be available on all streaming platforms and also on special CD and vinyl formats, available from the Official Bryan Ferry Store. (Please note that signed editions have now sold out.)
The Deluxe CD comes with an 18-page case bound book printed on Fine Linen uncoated paper. The Limited-Edition vinyl format includes an 180g black vinyl album in a wide spine sleeve with printed inner sleeve, both on uncoated paper with a matte dispersion finish and includes a 16-page booklet on uncoated offset paper.
The album artwork, designed in the style of the period, includes a written introduction by Princeton University musicologist Simon Morrison, and in his analysis he points out “Bitter-Sweet accomplishes what the modernists of the past, in their youthful enthusiasm, could not. Ferry’s music embraces the artifice of art as well as the artlessness of emotion so that the ‘sad affair’ described at the start leads you to ‘break down and cry’ by the end. Thus we are transported to the Berlin of the Tacheles club and the Chamäleon, to the zeitgeist of that jazz-friendly metropolis in the young 20th century – the hedonistic world of Babylon Berlin.”
Pre-order Bitter-Sweet from the Official Bryan Ferry store now!
Track List
Alphaville
Reason Or Rhyme
Sign Of The Times
New Town
Limbo
Bitter-Sweet
Dance Away
Zamba
Sea Breezes
While My Heart Is Still Beating
Bitters End
Chance Meeting
Boys And Girls