This is not just a record, not just a piece of music or, a literary monologue. Then comes the question, when do you play it?, when you are happy? No not really. When you are sad? It could tip you over the edge. When you are ready for a challenge, enlightenment or a plain ‘hairs standing up on the back of your neck’ moment, then that’s the time to place this record on your turntable.

The album starts with ‘Ritual Awakening’; “I clutch my phone with my sweaty palm in my hand. I clutch my heart, and the coffin for my heart, in my hand. It’s so loud, and I get so afraid, so I start speaking”. That all happens in the first 1 min 44 seconds of side 1.

Jenny herself says; 

Blood Bitch is an investigation of blood. Blood that is shed naturally. The purest and most powerful, yet most trivial, and most terrifying blood: Menstruation. The white and red toilet roll chain which ties together the virgins, the whores, the mothers, the witches, the dreamers, and the lovers.

Blood Bitch is also a fictitious story, fed by characters and images from horror and exploitation films of the '70s. With that language, rather than smart, modern social commentary, I found I could tell a different story about myself and my own time: a poetic diary of modern transience and transcendence.

There is a character in this story that is a vampire Orlando, traveling through time and space. But there is also a story here of a 35-year old artist stuck in a touring loop, and wearing a black wig. She is always up at night, jet lagged, playing late night shows - and by day she is quietly resting over an Arp Odyssey synthesizer while a black van drives her around Europe and America.

So this is my most fictional and most personal album. It’s also the first album where I’ve started reconnecting with the goth and metal scene I started out playing in many years ago, by remembering the drony qualities of Norwegian Black Metal. It’s an album of vampires, lunar cycles, sticky choruses, and the smell of warm leaves and winter.”

Jenny’s voice throughout goes from dreamy cloud gazing on a cold bright autumn day to the dark narration of a gritty honest truthfulness, that is a wonder to behold. The record is mainly electronic musically which as a consequence, opens up the listening experience to a whole flowing stream of sounds and sights, in the mind’s eye.

‘Period Piece’ brings in a raft of sharp instrumentation and oh, those lyrics again, “Dreaming was too lonely. I chose keeping it together and its IKEA white walls of my post-war Nordic silence, but only desire is real. I must find some kind of art form where I can call my tongue back from the underground.”

As a new record, it’s a fascinating achievement, and grows Jenny's catalogue in fine style, just how hard it will be to follow up in eighteen months times, will be interesting to follow.

A real star in the making, following in the footsteps of other Scandinavian artists who bring thoughtful music into our lives.

Pete
9/11

Website