Jenny Hval has released a second track from her John Parish-produced ‘Innocence is Kinky’ album, available on Rune Grammofon, from 19 April 2013. ‘The Seer‘ was marked as Pitchfork’s Best New Track, just like ‘Mephisto In The Water‘, also on the album. Listen below.

European tour dates follow, with more to come:

April 12 – Kafé K, Porsgrunn, Norway
April 16 – Cafe Mono, Oslo, Norway
April 17 – Familien, Trondheim, Norway
April 18 – Landmark, Bergen, Norway
April 19 – Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway
April 24 – Grüner Salon, Berlin, Germany
April 25 – Thalia Kino, Dresden, Germany
April 26 – donaufestival, Krems, Austria
April 27 – K4, Prague, Czech Republic
May 04 – Jazzhouse, Copenhagen, Denmark
May 14 – The Vortex, London, UK

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Jenny Hval will release her new album ‘Innocence is Kinky’ on Rune Grammofon, 19 April 2013. She has made a track available. It is called ‘I Called’, produced – like the rest of the album – by John Parish, who co-produced PJ Harvey’s last record.

I must have heard ‘Innocence is Kinky’ over a hundred-and-fifty times now.

It’s astonishing.

I’ve never taken so long to get my head around an album, but I’ve never been so rewarded for my patience. Its diversity is utterly breathtaking. Its creativity jaw-dropping.

European tour dates. More to be announced:

April 12 – Kafé K, Porsgrunn, Norway
April 16 – Cafe Mono, Oslo, Norway
April 17 – Familien, Trondheim, Norway
April 18 – Landmark, Bergen, Norway
April 19 – Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway
April 24 – Grüner Salon, Berlin, Germany
April 25 – Thalia Kino, Dresden, Germany
April 26 – donaufestival, Krems, Austria
April 27 – K4, Prague, Czech Republic
May 04 – Jazzhouse, Copenhagen, Denmark
May 14 – The Vortex, London, UK

Follow @5000projectmgmt

Jenny Hval has written a book.

Inn I Ansiktet (Sings With Her Eyes) is about the evils of the visual media: the murky footage of a naked Paris Hilton, images of the terrified Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street, the bizarre caricatures from Paradise Hotel. It’s about making your voice heard through feedback at a rock concert, about the way the voice changes when you speak another language, and about being harassed by a stranger in Perth.

But again and again Hval returns to Carl Th. Dreyer’s 1928 silent movie Jeanne d’Arc, to which she performed music in 2011; to the face of Renée Falconetti, the actress who embodied Jeanne; to a woman who heard the voice of God inside her own body.

Inn I Ansiktet is a fascinating, critical exploration of the voice; what it means, what it expresses. Jenny Hval’s personal experiences as a musician and singer illuminate – and are illuminated by – intriguing reflections on the female voice, on its constraints and its transgressive potential, as these appear in art and popular culture.

As part of the Øya music festival in 2011, Jenny performed a silent movie concert in Oslo. . Her own music accompanied the film La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s portrait of Jeanne d’Arc that dates from 1928). When Henie Onstad Art Centre approached Hval in 2011 to commission a site-specific sound installation, she decided to follow the thread she had started with Øya.

25 minutes long, the light design was created by Kyrre Heldal Karlsen, in cooperation with Jenny. During the vernissage she and Håvard Volden will perform an exclusive live version of the commissioned piece.

[Photos of Jenny by Gunhild Varvin, reproduced with the kind permission of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter]

“Jenny Hval is a woman of radical contrasts and disconcerting juxtapositions. Physically small, delicate and bird-like, her vocal suggests a much bigger set of lungs while her music explores the relationship between the organic and the man-made. Tonight, after a successful gig at The Borderline, she’s pondering the challenges of combining the extrovert and introverted elements of herself in performance.”

Read the interview here.

Now then.

This’ll be good.

The greatly respected Rune Grammofon label has unveiled a showcase at London’s Borderline, 19 March, with Jenny Hval and her stable-mate Phaedra. Doors 7.30, tickets £8.50 here. We can expect Jenny to perform songs from her much-lauded ‘Viscera’ album, which made Uncut’s Albums of The Year list 2011.