All you hear is the soft sound of birds chirping as the camera draws closer to British singer-songwriter Billie Marten. She’s laying in a field of mustard, and then suddenly computer tabs begin popping on screen: a peach crushed in someone’s hand, a supermarket, muddy rainboots. As we move through the “Garden of Eden” video, Marten gives us a kind of mood board, filled with color and life. It’s the first visual element we were treated to from her new album ‘Flora Fauna’, and the soft, flushed beauty of it encapsulates the mood of the record.
Marten has a particular knack for creating intimacy in her songwriting and sonic landscapes. It’s that ability to pull a listener into the quiet space of a song that floored us on her first two albums, and has only developed as she continues to hone in her voice. ‘Flora Fauna’ is a celebration of life, and gives us Marten at her most curious and exalted.
Billie sat down with BSides host Pete Mar to talk about the making of ‘Flora Fauna’, the experience of getting dropped from her first record label, its influence on her and more.
