Electronic Sound July 2015 (Regular Edition) | Page 21

logic are resolutely personal, much like
the way that Polly Scattergood flaunted
her insecurities on her first album. Or
maybe it’s as East India Youth’s William
Doyle told Electronic Sound a couple
of issues back. Maybe people trouble
themselves far too much with what’s
going on in the mind of whoever writes
the song lyrics.

JENNY HVAL
Apocalypse, Girl
SACRED BONES

The Norwegian songstress is all over
the shop, but this is fascinating stuff
In some circles, Jenny Hval might be
perceived as an artist who just happens
to be working in the field of sound.
In others, she’d be recognised as a
wordsmith, a bard, an author, maybe
also a feminist. The reality is that Hval
is probably all these and more, and her
new album, ‘Apocalypse, Girl’, firmly
reinforces the point with its opening
track, ‘Kingsize’.
Starting with a quote from everyone’s
favourite Danish poet Mette Moestrup,
‘Kingsize’ is like a set of cues for a play
in which only oblique directions are
given. With themes ranging from the
philosophical to the mundanity of life
via Duchampian absurdity, anthropology,
sexuality and baking, ‘Kingsize’ rapidly
moves from something sharply evocative
to mere words. Those words, however,
become increasingly irrelevant compared
to the sonic events happening behind
Hval’s processed utterances and knowing
intonations.
There is a delicate profundity to Hval’s
lyrics throughout, though you get the
impression that the meaning and the

If we cannot make sense of the message,
let us at least focus on the music that
Hval has created to act as the carrier.
The sounds here consist of harrowing
drones, a faltering tapestry of ticks,
clicks, glitches, tinny synths, horror film
atmospherics and micro sound worlds,
sometimes cutting to serene, almost
soulful, almost pop passages. A track will
morph in a moment from an enveloping
ambience to a minimal IDM pulse, from
a twisted pop hybrid to electronically
sutured jazz to a modern classical
passage. Nothing stays still, everything
changes, is what these textural creations
appear to be saying.
At its lyrical and its musical core,

‘Apocalypse, Girl’ seems to question the
point (or pointlessness) of existence.
At the same time, the constant shifting
back and forth reflects the jump-cut
pace and pressures of a 21st century
life – the sensory overload, the shorttermism, the post-‘Sex And The City’,
post-‘Girls’ libertarianism, the hopes,
the frustrations, the disappointments.
The rapid changes of direction could be
described as schizophrenic, although
more fairly as stylistic restlessness, while
the title and the record cover is perhaps
Hval viewing herself, or her art, as a bit
of a chaotic disaster.
Quite how Jenny Hval’s band – Håvard
Volden, Kyrre Laastad, Jaga Jazzist’s
Øystein Moen, Thor Harris from Swans,
Okkyung Lee on cello and Rhodri Davis
on harp – make sense of all this is
anyone’s guess. That they do, and that
they can embellish Hval’s musings and
loops so seamlessly and evocatively,
is undoubtedly the greatest success of
‘Apocalypse, Girl’.
MAT SMITH