CHALLENGE // Jenny Hval

The jury's reasoning

Jenny Hval is no newcomer, but in every way a steady challenger in Norwegian music life: Where does she belong? She herself says: In music. At the same time, text seems to be the springboard for everything she does, and she creates tactile texts that are not much like other texts in Norwegian music. Another springboard is improvisation. A third is voice; not the schooled voice, but the voice as the embodiment of sensual experience, through singing styles that not least challenge the expectations of popular music. "Viscera" ("the internal organs") is a concept album that both directly and subtly explores a kind of "body's being in the world", without this appearing pompous or distant. The album is a liberatingly different, and seductively eccentric element in Norwegian music, which with a small group of alert musicians and a co-creative producer, creates expectations for new, unprecedented music.