Live:
Solo: Jenny + vocal f/x, guitar and sampler.
Duo: with Håvard Volden (guitar & autoharp ++)
Trio: with Håvard Volden and Kyrre Laastad (2 drums, guitar, percussion)
Influences
Lately: Antichrist
Manafon
Helena Eriksson
Cindy Haug
Spain
Kathy Acker & Heiner Müller again.
pearls
and
books.
Always:
Automatic writing and automatic singing, Meredith Monk and Diamanda Galas, Anne Carson and Aritha van Herk because they write fantasy with theory, Kate Bush and Hélène Cixous should be teaching us how to read, Nicole Brossard and Tender Buttons for knowing words can save us, Dead Can Dance and the Cocteau Twins for the opposite reason and the same, Alice in Wonderland and Angela Carter re-writing her, Euripides and Dante but also Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you must understand, Steve Reich and Stephen Scott because their names look good together, and oh, a healthy mix of David Sylvian and Withnail & I. Tom once told me I looked a bit like Freddie Mercury. It's true I think. Song in blood and everyone.
Rockettothesky, AKA Jenny Hval, AKA me, is a one-woman band. It is also an invocation of the voices of the dead. What began as a secret project of spontaneous monologues for my dead dog, Inka, slowly became a string of musical recordings of improvised melodies.
I read, and I read by reading books and writing at the same time. It makes me a bad reader, but a great dreamer. And so I stitch and dream together other people's words and my own with the freedom of pop music - or perhaps more and more a free-form kind of pop music.
Anyway. In 2006, I released my first album: To Sing You Apple Trees, on TrustMe records. (Click here to buy it.)
Since then, I've been writing - and not just music. I'm a writer, you see, and I've been busy with pieces of fiction, articles, essays, spoken word pieces... You can get an anthology I'm in (English)...and another anthology I'm in (Norwegian). And I scribbled some stuff about David Bowie in a journal, too (Norwegian). So there.
...and then, my second album, Medea. A big project, conceptual dreaming. I was looking for voices not my own, like Friedrich Jürgenson recorded voices of ghosts in empty rooms. In fact, I found that my own voice might be full of other voices - voices of the dead, voices from another place.
high thanks for the add and for your words. I'd love to read some of your poems or whatever they are, in English. Tell me (please) if there's an easy way to get any. Feel embraced and keep in touch.
Hello Jenny, how's things these days? still making beautiful music i see. i'm still plugging away too, hoping the new year will bring a finally completed album, and perhaps a few gigs or 2 down your way. take care, Luisa
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