bits and pieces collected by @jimmiehu
I carefully rearranged my senses
so they could have a conversation.
Taught them to switch places;
from each pore in my skin grew shimmering eye!s
And fingerprints filled the eye sockets.
- Blood Flight.
yep, its been a while - but let’s not get into that.
after piling and hoarding ideas, music, and all kinds of fascinating and wonderful stuff during the past months, i figured its time to finally get off the hiatus, get back to this blog and share my finds. it feels pretty good actually :)
and off we go.
you have just been listening to the captivating sounds of a very creative lady from norway. not quite nameless, singer, writer and poet jenny hval released her latest record on rune grammofon in february. she has been around before, though using an alias to release her former records as rockettothesky. although i like her former work, it is for this one to really intrigue me. viscera is a wonderful, warm and rather “carnal” compilation of diligently designed songs and sounds that are oscillating between atmospheric shimmer and rhythmic, lively emotions - elaborate and well-thought-out as well as explorative and improvised. supported by håvard volden (git) and kyrre laastad (d), hval eplores vocal and acoustic spheres (and actually more than once reminded me of sidsel endresen…) the motif that gleams every now and then deals with exploring and travelling - into and out of bodies, inside and outside of footings and musical structures. truly inspiring!
it does not come too surprising that she teamed up with an old stager for this kind of sound: helge stern produced and recorded the album and obviously (and luckily) left his footprint on there. you actually might know him as deathprod and (hopefully) know his stunning quartet supersilent (including the brilliant arve henriksen… but we will get to that later).
as for now, ill leave you with this fascinating video portrait. directed by ij biermann in spring 2011, it marks the beginning of a series of artist portraits, featuring their music, a personal place - and themselves. i cant help it but i find this incredibly unsettling and intense. an impressive piece of work - that certainly strikes the viewer.
