Browse by Artist: HVAL, JENNY

Artist:	HVAL, JENNY
Title:	Viscera
Label:	RUNE GRAMMOFON (NORWAY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RCD 2108CD

Jenny Hval is a Norwegian artist and writer and this is her first album using her own name. With a background in writing and performance, her music is poetic, sensual, challenging, dark and beautiful, as well as melodic and spacious. In 2006, Hval released her successful debut album To Sing You Apple Trees under the moniker Rockettothesky. The album received rave reviews and became a surprise hit with its mix of pop, poetry and rampant sexuality. She was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy in the "Best New Act" category and she played most of the big Norwegian festivals in 2007, as well as shows and small festivals in the UK and Europe. With her second album, Medea (2008, also as Rockettothesky), a different and more experimental tone was set. Hval invoked the Greek tragic heroine Medea -- the monstrous mother, powerful sorceress, and foreign woman -- through spoken-word and improvised sound textures. She also started playing live with free improv musicians Håvard Volden (guitar) and Kyrre Laastad (drums & percussion). Since the release of Medea, Hval has completed several other projects: composing and performing the commissioned piece "Meshes Of Voice" with singer and composer Susanna Wallumrød (Susanna and the Magical Orchestra) for Ladyfest 2009, composing and performing at the Ultima Festival for Contemporary Music, publishing the slightly controversial novel Perlebryggeriet (trans. The Pearl Brewery, 2009) and starting a free folk/improv duo with Håvard Volden (Nude On Sand). Viscera is set in the body. The songs are stories of flesh and travelling, both sensual and provocative. She wanted to make free music without a conceptual framework, but realized after recording the album that all the songs deal with travelling in one way or another. Some songs have a modernist protagonist -- an unknown and yet present I -- whereas other songs take place in the body, viscerally travelling. Inside becomes outside, the body is turned inside-out. The music for Viscera was composed and arranged by improvising. It follows the lyrics wherever they go: spoken-word, surrealist folk tales, or just plain provocative imagery. Modernist fantasy? Fantastic anatomy? Produced by Deathprod and Jenny Hval.

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