Vocal surrealist Jenny Hval launches tour and release Jess Franco-inspired video.
Norwegian artist Jenny Hval is one our favorite recording artists, a cinematically-informed avant garde artist who uses her voice as an instrument, as a tool to affect, assault and paint some of the most abstract and alluring aural landscapes we’ve ever heard.
And the lady loves horror movies. And that love seeps into much of what she does.
No more is that affection for arcane cinema more profound than in her impending album BLOOD BITCH (Out September 30th from Sacred Bones).
Co-produced with noise producer Lasse Marhaug, Blood Bitch is an investigation of blood. Blood that is shed naturally. The white and red toilet roll chain which ties together the virgins, the whores, the mothers, the witches, the dreamers, and the lovers.
It is Hvals most fictional yet most personal album.
And the first single? Well, it’s a salute to the great Jess Franco, in fact. In a way…
It’s called Female Vampire.
While touring her previous album, the mesmerizing APOCALYPSE, GIRL, Hval discovered the obsessive, jazz-inspired world of iconic and prolific cult filmmaker Jess Franco and, taking its thematic cues and title from one of Francos most famous films, Female Vampire was born, the perfect single for what is in essence a concept album about menstruation.
In conjunction with a North American tour announcement (all dates are below), Hval now introduces the video for “Female Vampire”, directed by Jenny Berger Myhre, shot an iPhone and starring Hval and her friends stuck together by dripping liquid latex, the video nods to the low budget horror sexploitation films of the late ’70s and early ’80s from which the album was inspired.
As Hval explains: What does eternity feel like? How do you live when there is no death? Usually, the vampire is depicted as a lonesome, all-knowing and ancient creature combining violence, aggressive sexuality and deceitful youth. The pack behind the video for Female Vampire wanted to explore vampiric eternity in a different narrative: in a group of romancing friends. The vampire friends move through their hometown of Oslo, partaking in public and private rituals of moving together. We also wanted to combine ideas from old vampire trash movies and modern trashy iPhone videos, resulting in an enigmatic world of time-lapse like slow motion where everything is always moving, or moving on. Not there, or not there yet.
Check out the video below and see if Jenny is coming to your town in the tour schedule below…
Jenny Hval Tour Dates:
(new shows in bold)
Fri. July 15 Chicago, IL @ Constellation w/ Circuit Des Yeux
Sat. July 16 Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival
Fri. Aug. 5 – Katowice, PL @ Off Festival
Sun. Sep. 4 – Larmer Tree Gardens, UK @ End of the Road
Wed. Sep. 14 – Oslo, NO @ Ultima Festival
Thu. Sep. 29 Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA
Fri. Sep. 30 – New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge
Tue. Oct. 4 Boston, MA @ Great Scott
Wed. Oct. 5 Montreal, QC @ Casa del Popolo
Fri. Oct. 7 Toronto, ON @ The Drake
Sat. Oct. 8 Oberlin, OH @ Oberlin College
Sun. Oct. 9 Washington, DC @ DC9
Mon. Oct. 17 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
Tue. Oct. 18 – Manchester, UK @ Soup Kitchen
Wed. Oct. 19 – London, UK @ Oslo
Fri. Oct. 21 – Brussels, BE @ AB
Sat. Oct. 22 – Paris, FR @ Point Ephemere
Mon. Oct. 24 – Luzern, CH @ Suedpol
Wed. Oct. 26 – Berlin, DE @ Kantine am Berghain
Thu. Oct. 27 – Amsterdam, NL @ De School
Fri. Oct. 28 – Hamburg, DE @ Kampnagel
Sat. Oct. 29 Copenhagen, DK @ Jazzhouse
Fri. Nov. 11 – Los Angeles, CA @ Resident
Sat. Nov. 12 Oakland, CA @ Starline Social Club
Mon. Nov. 14 Portland, OR @ Holocene
Tue. Nov. 15 Seattle, WA @ Kremwerk
Wed. Nov. 16 Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
