Broken Wings

Blackbird & the Storm is the vision and work of Marie-Juliette Bird, an artist based in London and the American West. The project was spurred by a desire to create original music, seeking inspiration from the source of melody: birds. As Marie-Juliette explored birdsong, she came across an article about the demise of the cuckoo, a bird that has featured heavily in human culture. Now endangered, this bird is disappearing, along with many others, as a result of human effects on the planet. “The birds are, in my mind, the canaries in the mine; they show us how changes in temperature, as a result of human activity, are affecting all life in a real way.” - Marie-Juliette Bird. Broken Wings’ is the first release taken from Blackbird & the Storm’s 12-song album, Songs For A Drowning World. Birds are the musical heart of the record, representing the voice of the natural world. The album is a conceptual project that explores the relationship between nature and human nature. The result is a dreamy ode to birdsong in which human expression and the natural world interweave. This sound world is both ancient and altogether new. These themes carry the current of the entire album. ‘Broken Wings’ also expresses an uplifting fragility and beauty that mirrors the essence of human relationships as well as the essence of nature as a whole. The chorus, 'All our broken wings, they will be healed by love', voices an antidote to despair. Within ‘Broken Wing’s, binaural samples of crickets, toads, wind, rain, thunder, lightning, hummingbirds, songbirds and wings-in-flight, are mixed alongside musical instruments and Marie-Juliette’s intoxicating voice. The project was recorded at An Endless Room, (formerly Mayfair Studios), in Primrose Hill in 2011. Marie-Juliette then spent a year in Colorado, sourcing and working with field recordings. “The vocal is embedded in the natural soundscape, which is a mirror of my place in the natural order, as I see it.” The result is a new sound where life and earth weave a sensual, melancholy music. The video for ‘Broken Wings’ was written and directed by Marie-Juliette and shot on Super 8 last summer in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Like many areas of the American West, this area recently suffered major destruction from wildfires believed to have been fueled by global warming. Additional found footage was contributed by locals who had personally experienced the wildfires and who had captured these disasters on mobile phones or video cameras. As with the song, the video’s themes are of the natural and human worlds merging; destruction of a wildfire mirrors the violence of a fight between lovers and the healing element of rain coincides with reconciliation. Throughout the project, Birdsong, and the interrelationship between nature and humanity, create a moving theme, and portend great things to come from an up and coming talent in Marie-Juliette Bird.