Day 172: Anna von Hausswolff – Dead Magic
Two things I would like to recommend today: number one is Iggy Pop’s radio show on BBC Radio 6, I’m pretty sure you can listen to it from anywhere if you use the BBC Sounds app. The second thing is scrapbooking. If you combine these two, I can almost guarantee you will have a whale of a time. I had a very quiet day at work so I spent my day cutting up my old Nat Geos for material. I am aware this is about as close as you can get to an ideal day of labour.
Album cover courtesy of City Slang
I realised from listening to Iggy’s show that I haven’t actually listened to Anna von Hausswolff. And I call myself an organ groupie – pitiful performance from me. Anna von Hausswolff is a Swedish composer, singer and organist who’s been making a name for herself with her metal-inspired organ music that’s been described as funeral pop. To date, she’s released six albums, and her latest one to much critical acclaim last year, but I thought I’d go for her 2018 release Dead Magic.
Dead Magic was recorded at Frederik's Church in Copenhagen, and it really is an exceptional piece of neoclassical darkwave-y organ music. Anna von Hausswolff uses the primary elements on the album, the pipe organ and her voice, in a way that’s emotionally evocative and very unique. In the middle of “Ugly and Vengeful” her singing reminds me a bit of Elizabeth Fraser from Cocteau Twins. At other times, I’m reminded of Kate Bush, or maybe a bit of Siouxsie Sioux. But she’s still a true original and I’m so glad to have discovered her work.
Also, she’s been subjected to protests by idiots. She’d organised with the diocese (!) of Nantes to come do an instrumental performance at a church called Notre-Dame de Bon-Port, but it got cancelled for security reasons. A blogger called her the “High Priestess of satanic art” so a gaggle of local youths who felt that they know religion better than the Catholic church gathered to make her and the concertgoers feel unsafe.
And here I thought the protests would have come from conservative old Catholic ladies! Instead, it’s far-right youths whose brains have rotted from too much internet and not enough sense. If you look at a video from the event, it’s mostly young boys who said they’d heard about it on Facebook. They apparently broke in to find her to assault her in the name of the lord, presumably intending to burn the heathen. Very ye old time-y. No doubt the young worshippers went home afterwards to enjoy a pious evening of Andrew Tate videos and internet porn.
She plays the organ, she sings beautifully, she’s a talented composer AND she’s making all the right people angry? You could have stopped at organ, I was already sold. I don’t know if I’m undergoing some sort of a medical crisis, or if I just love hearing the organ so much, or if I specifically love Anna von Hausswolff’s music, but I almost feel a little bit heady listening to it. I could see it being a 10, but there’s just a bit of something missing from it, maybe a final push of intensity or something. It’s still a very respectable 9/10.