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‘ORCHESTRA’ Introducing Loose Talk, the new collaborative album of music by Bryan Ferry with spoken texts by performance artist, writer and painter Amelia Barratt, due for release on March 28, 2025. Pre-order/save HERE.
Richly detailed and transportive, ‘Orchestra’ is released today - the first piece to be revealed from the album Loose Talk. The accompanying video was shot and directed by Bryan Ferry. Watch here.
Loose Talk signals the beginning of a new creative chapter for Bryan Ferry, blurring the lines between music, poetry and art. Fifty-three years since Roxy Music’s iconic debut album arrived like a bolt-from-the-blue, his latest project is just as startlingly unexpected. The sounds and shapes, and the spoken words they are set to, are unlike any previous Bryan Ferry album. At the same time, the mood that Loose Talk captures is rooted in Ferry’s past half-century of work.
Loose Talk marks the first time Ferry has created new music for another writer’s words. The album consists of eleven texts, composed by Amelia Barratt, creating fascinating micro-fictions, simultaneously fragmentary and self-contained.
The album balances refined minimalism and abstraction with an experimental and youthful energy. Ferry’s music and Barratt’s texts each hold their own codes. As those codes pulse as one, the album discovers its own language – two monologues begin a conversation that becomes a duet.
Discussing Loose Talk, Bryan Ferry said:
“The whole experience of making Loose Talk has had an interesting newness about it. It seems to have opened a whole new chapter in my work. There’s a really strong mood to the work that Amelia does and I was very conscious of not getting in the way of her words. Hopefully, together, we’ve created something neither could do on our own.
The nearest I ever got to doing pieces like this before would maybe be back in Roxy with “In Every Dream Home A Heartache,” and “Mother Of Pearl”. To some extent, those are kind of spoken monologues. I’m pleased that when we’ve played Loose Talk to people, they’ve said, “Oh, this sounds really different.” That’s what I’ve always wanted with everything I’ve done, or been involved in, to be: different. Different to what you’ve heard before, or seen before. That’s the whole point of being an artist: trying to create a new thing, a new world.”
Amelia Barratt said:
“Loose Talk is a conversation between two artists: a collaborative album of music by Bryan Ferry with spoken texts by me. It’s cinematic; music put to pictures.
There’s possibility for experimentation within a frame. And there’s a freedom in knowing exactly what my part to play is, then being able to pass a baton, stretching out creatively and knowing there is someone on the other side to take it further. Nothing feels off limits.”
Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt were first connected via their separate involvements in the art world. The collaboration began with a chance meeting at an exhibition opening, where Ferry grew intrigued to learn Barratt had started working with writing and performance in parallel with her painting. Both artists share an art school background – Bryan Ferry studied painting at Newcastle University in the 1960s, Barratt at Glasgow School of Art and the Slade School of Art, where she received an MFA in 2016 – but it’s the differences between them that animate Loose Talk and create unmapped territory.
Bryan Ferry’s collaboration with Amelia Barratt was first teased with the release of ‘Star’ in 2024 - presented as the latest composition on the newly released 81 track career-spanning collection, Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023.
Loose Talk will be released on March 28 digitally, on CD, Black Vinyl, Green Vinyl and Clear Vinyl. The album is available to pre-order/save HERE.
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