Alicia Edelweiss

Inside the empty halls of the historic Südbahnhotel, Alicia Edelweiss appears like a statue come to life - crowned with a spiky halo and draped in a flowing gold-white gown. When we first recorded a session with the British-Austrian artist, the set-up was charmingly reduced, reflecting her beginnings as a travelling street musician. Back then, her remarkable voice was accompanied only by accordion and cello. This time, however, the music demanded something bigger. As Alicia Edelweiss says about her second album FURIE, the songs themselves were screaming for opulence. Joined by long-time collaborators Matthias Frey (violin), Lukas Lauermann (cello), and Jay Choma (synthesizers, layered vocals), the sound opens into something vast and almost otherworldly. In "The Fall, The Fly and the Water," singing turns into screaming, flight turns into falling, and the final crash into the water feels both devastating and strangely liberating - "singing and screaming out of relief."