Jenny Hval

About

Norwegian musician, writer and artist Jenny Hval comes to The White Hotel for the first time in support of her latest album Iris Silver Mist. Named after the fragrance by Serge Lutens with the same name, the album too moves like a perfume—between flower and smoke, ghostly yet alive. Many of the songs on Iris Silver Mist were created as a mixtape, as one continuous flow of ideas. Before the songs were recorded, they were performed like this, as long, shapeshifting pieces, as part of the interdisciplinary piece I want to be a Machine. The album has kept this feeling of one song seeping into the next. Field recordings blur the line between music and the world around it, too. In ‘Heiner Müller’, we hear the sound of the artist singing to herself while walking her dog in the rain. ‘Spirit Mist’ includes the hum of the Oslo subway. “It is about moving,” Jenny says about the album, but she means it in a more symbiotic way. Moving into the sound, as one song turns into the next, as she turns into the music, and her perfume does so, too. Iris Silver Mist is a record about the stage, the music and how it can change us. About the things that touch us, change us, and settle on or under our skin.