Norwegian musician, artist and novelist Jenny Hval announces her new album, Iris Silver Mist, out on 2 May via 4AD / Remote Control Records, the lead single/video ‘To be a rose’, and a UK/EU tour. Iris Silver Mist is named after a fragrance made by the nose Maurice Roucel for the French perfume house Serge Lutens. It’s described as smelling more like steel than silver. It is cold and prickly, soft and shimmering, like stepping outside on an early, misty morning, your body still warm from sleep. A perfume, with its heart notes and scented accords, shares its language with music. Both travel through air, simultaneously invisible and distinct.
The song’s accompanying video is composed of footage shot on various tours from 2015-2024 and edited by Jenny Merger Myhre, who handled visuals on tour in 2015. “Often we performed on stages or in places that had no screen, or even no projector,” says Myhre. “As a result, what I filmed would often not be visible for the audience, and so the act of filming became the performance. Using an old VHS-C-camera, I would film parts of the shows as a ritual of seeing and being seen. When we did have a screen, the camera was directly outputting to the video projector, and I loved the moment of going from ‘live footage’ to rewinding into backstage moments, preparations, and previous shows, allowing time travel to happen in real time.”