Jenny Hval

"Iris Silver Mist" is the new album by Norwegian musician, author and artist Jenny Hval. Named after the fragrance of the same name by Serge Lutens, the album also moves like a perfume - between flowers and smoke, ghostly and yet alive.

The album began not with music, but with its absence. When live music disappeared during the pandemic, Jenny Hval was left with a void that was hard to name until she found herself drawn to perfume. Smelling and collecting, reading and writing: she put music aside and surrounded herself with the notes and chords of scents instead. It was only later that she understood why: she was looking for another way to feel presence, to fill the void that music had left behind. When she finally started making music again, every song was imbued with scents.

Many of the songs on "Iris Silver Mist" were created as a mixtape, a single, continuous flow of ideas. Before the songs were recorded, that's exactly how they were performed - as long, shifting pieces, as part of the interdisciplinary work "I want to be a Machine". The album retains this feeling of one song flowing into the next. Field recordings also blur the boundary between music and the surrounding world. In "Heiner Müller", we hear the artist singing to herself while walking her dog in the rain. "Spirit Mist" contains the hum of the Oslo subway. "It's about movement," says Jenny about the album, but she means it in a more symbiotic sense. Moving into the sound as one song transitions into the next, as she becomes the music and her perfume does the same.

"Iris Silver Mist" is an album about the stage, music and how it can change us. About the things that touch us, change us and settle on or under our skin.