• News

• All

Sep 09, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Jenny Hval

Norwegian avant-garde musician Jenny Hval is releasing a new album, The Practice of Love, this Friday (September 13) via Sacred Bones. Now she has shared another song from the album, “Accident,” via a strange video for the track. Frequent collaborator Zia Anger directed the video, which features Anger’s own mother as well as clips from previous Hval videos Anger directed and excerpts from an email conversation between Anger and Hval. Watch it below, followed by Hval’s upcoming tour dates.

Hval and Anger released this joint statement about the video: “With the release of this video we planned on publishing a dialogue between the two of us. Something that spoke about the kind of work we are doing, and that also referenced the theme of the video - the pairing of production and reproduction.

“It’s a given that the product of some artistic work is worthless. You are therefore expected to ‘mother’ it instead of working and being compensated for it. And sometimes this is the best kind of work. Because it doesn’t feel valuable. Because not everybody will like it, or understand it. Because it won’t immediately be sucked up into the capitalist scroll. It has time and space to be conceived of, to sit in utero, to be birthed, to have its umbilical cord cut, and to live, to breathe.

“The same is true of our collaboration. We are both seen and heard by each other, and often validated by our responses to each other. However big (with a video) or small (with an email.) Our collaboration validates each other’s right to breathe, to live, to speak. It’s the closest we get to magic.

“This dialogue however, felt rushed. We will publish it at a later date. Until then.”

Previously Hval shared The Practice of Love‘s first single, “Ashes to Ashes” (which was one of our Songs of the Week). Then she shared another song from the album, “High Alice” (which was #2 on our Songs of the Week list).

The album is the follow-up to her acclaimed 2016 album, Blood Bitch, and her 2018 EP, The Long Sleep. The album features guest vocalists Vivian Wang, Laura Jean Englert, and Félicia Atkinson. The title The Practice of Love was partially inspired by Valie Export’s 1985 film of the same name.

Hval had this to say about the album in a previous press release: “This all sounds very clichéd, like a standard greeting card expression. But for me, love, and the practice of love, has been deeply tied to the feeling of otherness. Love as a theme in art has been the domain of the canonized, big artists, and I have always seen myself as a minor character, a voice that speaks of other things. But in the last few years I have wanted to take a closer look at the practice of otherness, this fragile performance, and how it can express love, intimacy, empathy and desire. I have wanted to ask bigger, wider, kind of idiotic questions like: What is our job as a member of the human race? Do we have to accept this job, and if we don’t, does the pressure to be normal ever stop?”

Jenny Hval Tour Dates:

Fri. Sept. 20 - Sat. Sept. 21 - Oslo, NO @ Ultima Festival
Sun. Sept. 29 - London, UK @ Milton Court
Wed. Oct. 16 - Frankfurt, DE @ Mousonturm
Wed. Oct. 30 - Paris, FR @ Centre Pompidou
Sat. Nov. 9 - Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who? Festival
Sat. Nov. 23 - Katowice, PL @ Ars Cameralis Festival

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.