jenny hval & susanna: meshes of voice

"Mythical animals were a big inspiration," says composer and songwriter Jenny Hval about Meshes of Voice, her collaboration with Susanna. "We looked at Medusa, Athena, and Harpy (a combination of woman and bird) -- as examples of depictions of woman -- the ugly, the goddess-like, the gruesome," agrees Susanna. This collaboration -- featuring the two strongest Nordic voices around today -- started back in 2008 as an exchange of letters, then developed into two live performances, one at the Henie Onstad Art Centre in March 2009, which turned out to be this album, the other at Oslo Jazz Festival. Mixed and mastered by Helge Sten (Deathprod, Supersilent), Meshes of Voice presents a stunning vocal universe of confessions, whispers, and seductions. Tracks like "I Have Walked This Body" seem to rise monstrously and threateningly out of some mythological fog of distorted improvised noise. A key inspiration was film maker Maya Deren's surrealist, cyclical Meshes of the Afternoon, a milestone of visionary film from 1943. Deren's famous image of a cloaked figure with a reflective face recurs on "A Mirror in My Mouth," creating a complex world of musical fictions akin to those of Julia Holter and Joanna Newsom. Meshes of Voice is released on SusannaSonata, which Susanna launched in 2001 as a self-operated outlet for her to curate her own back-catalog and develop new music. Upon its release as a CD in 2014, Meshes of Voice received much acclaim from the music critics and the audience, and won the Norwegian Grammy in Open Category. This double LP edition is limited to 500 copies, with the same gorgeous cover art made from art by Arne Bendik Sjur and designed by Johanna Blom. Jenny Hval: voice, effects, noise, samples, guitar, autoharp, piano; Susanna: voice, grand piano, effects, noise, samples, electric harmonium; Anita Kaasbøll: voice, effects, noise, drums; Jo Berger Myhre: double bass, zither, effects, noise. Recorded at Henie Onstad Arts Centre, Høvikodden, Norway, on March 8, 2009, by David Solheim. Mixed and mastered at Audio Virus Lab.