Best New Tracks - Pitchfork: Susanna / Jenny Hval: "I Have Walked This Body"

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Susanna / Jenny Hval: "I Have Walked This Body" Posted: 16 Jul 2014 02:30 PM PDT In March, the Norwegian singer Jenny Hval told me that she often writes her songs atop a canvas of noise, incidental sounds captured by a cheap microphone. "Instead of silence, it's like a sheet that's very dirty instead of blank," she said. "How can you ever start from nothing? I like to start from noise." So begins "I Have Walked This Body", the first sample of her voluminous full-length collaboration with fellow Nordic singer Susanna Wallumrød: Hval's voice rises suddenly from a bed of harmonium drone, the tone cold and commanding. But this isn't a mere background hum, hanging passively in the distance. Instead, the roar morphs from a steady din into a dynamic one, tracing the quick curves of both singers and yielding to their starts and stops. The song seems less born of noise than the very wellspring of it. The riptide static and the feedback pour from the powerful vocals themselves, a reflection of the personal animism written into the words. There's a lot of intrigue and speculation surrounding Scott O))), the secretive collaboration between Scott Walker and Sunn O))). If it's as good as it could be, it might go something like this wonder. [off Meshes of Voices out 8/19 on SusannaSonata]