Flora Hibberd

Swirl is Flora Hibberd’s new album, out on 17 January 2025 on 22Twenty

Like a textile artist, Flora Hibberd weaves layers of meaning into her music. Swirl, the debut album from the British songwriter based in Paris, is a cycle of songs about codes and decoding. Drawing upon her professional experience as a translator of art history texts, Hibberd searches for slippages, where French and English words rub up against each other in uncanny ways. Strange poetry appears in these moments, giving rare glimpses at life’s hidden threads, and illuminating our understanding.

“Sometimes I write songs by looking for moments where words jar and don’t seem natural,” says Hibberd. “My work as a translator is relevant to my lyrics, because it provides a framework of how languages, symbols, and meanings can change. There are loads of metaphors in my songs because music itself is a language, every instrument is a language, and it goes down in layers from there.”