Anna von Hausswolff | |
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![]() Von Hausswolff in 2022 | |
Background information | |
Birth name | Anna Michaela Ebba Electra von Hausswolff |
Born | Gothenburg, Sweden | 6 September 1986
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Years active | 2008–present |
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Website | annavonhausswolffmusic |
Anna Michaela Ebba Electra von Hausswolff (born 6 September 1986) is a Swedish singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and pipe organist. She is known for her gothic-styled music, usually accompanied by the pipe organ. Von Hausswolff's music has received praise from music critics, though it resulted in protests from Catholic fundamentalist groups. [1] [2]
Born in Gothenburg, Sweden, [3] von Hausswolff is the daughter of avant-garde sound artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff. [4] She was a student of architecture at Chalmers University of Technology. [4]
Von Hausswolff released her debut single, "Track of Time", on 5 February 2010, [5] followed by the debut album Singing from the Grave. The album was warmly received by the Swedish press. [6] She played the Way Out West Festival in 2009. [4] In March 2010, she opened for Tindersticks on three occasions [7] and toured Brazil with Taken by Trees and Taxi Taxi! Then in 2011, she opened for Lykke Li thrice, and also for M.Ward at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. She has played at several big festivals in Sweden such as Peace and Love, Storsjöyran, Way Out West, Arvika, and Made Festival. Hausswolff is noted for her expressive voice and her live performances, [4] [7] and is sometimes compared to Diamanda Galás.
On July 9, 2013, Ceremony was released in North America by Other Music Recording Co., and Anna von Hausswolff played her debut US show on July 10 at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn. The album received strong support from National Public Radio's Bob Boilen, who said "Von Hausswolff's voice possesses the power to soar with those mighty pipes and still hold tight to delicate, personal emotions. I hope to find one album like Ceremony every year — a rare, thoughtful, inspiring record for a night on the couch or a candlelit evening — and now I've got one for 2013."[ citation needed ] She was also featured on NPR's Weekend Edition , PRI's The World , WNYC Soundcheck , the New York Times , Pitchfork and more.[ citation needed ]
Von Hausswolff released her fourth album, Dead Magic , in March 2018. It received critical acclaim, with some calling it her "darkest, most ambitious record to date". [8] Von Hausswolff produced the album with Sunn O))) 's producer Randall Dunn and was recorded on the 20th-century pipe organ at Copenhagen's rococo-style Marble Church. [3] Von Hausswolff hopes that the album causes listeners to accept mystery and ambiguity in an "extremely materialistic society where everything needs to be explained." [9]
All Thoughts Fly is the fifth album, recorded the pipe organ of Örgryte New Church in Gothenburg. The organ is a Swedish replica of the Arp Schnitger organ in Germany. It is the largest organ tuned in quarter-comma meantone temperament worldwide.[ citation needed ]
Anna von Hausswolff appears on the Sunn O))) record Metta, Benevolence. BBC 6Music: Live on the Invitation of Mary Anne Hobbs (2021)
Anna has collaborated with Wolves in the Throne Room, Swans, Sunn O))), and Yann Tiersen.
Von Hausswolff's gothic-style music is described as "art pop, drone, and post-metal", with "a juxtaposition of dark and bright". The Guardian has described it as "funeral pop". [3] Her 2015 release, The Miraculous, is noted for its "gothic splendour". [10] Dead Magic shows a "brighter, poppier beat". Her vocals are similar to Nico, Diamanda Galás, Peruvian soprano Yma Sumac, and are compared to Kate Bush and A Kiss In The Dreamhouse -era Siouxsie Sioux. [10] Her music is associated with the Krautrock genre with odes to Einstürzende Neubauten and Swans. [10]
The pipe organ features heavily in her work. In an interview with The National about the album, she spoke to the physically demanding nature of the instrument, "You are working with your hands and feet, and you have all these stops that you are pulling in and out to make flute sounds, or maybe trumpet sounds. If you are playing fast it’s like dancing – you have to move the entire body to make it work.” [11]
On 7 December 2021, von Hausswolff cancelled her planned concert at the Notre-Dame de Bon-Port in Nantes, France, following boycott demands from fundamentalist Catholic groups. Deeming her music "Satanic", the protestors blocked the church's entrance. [12] [13] [14] [15] Complaints against von Hausswolff include her 2009 song "Pills", which features the lyrics "I made love with the devil". [16] However, the scheduled concerts were instrumental on organ without lyrics. [12] The concert, organized by Le Lieu unique, [17] had been scheduled with approval from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nantes. On 9 December 2021, a concert planned at Saint-Eustache church in Paris was also threatened [18] [19] and rescheduled to the Protestant Unie de l'Etoile church, a location kept secret until the last moment except for ticket holders. [20] In a press release, the priest of Saint-Eustache explained that show was cancelled due to security reasons, and not due to the content of von Hausswolff's work. [21] Organisers for von Hausswolff and the Syndicat des musiques actuelles (SMA) lamented the lack of political support for the holding of the concert. [22] The organiser and the spectators of the canceled concert in Nantes have announced intentions to file a complaint against the fundamentalists for obstructing freedom of expression. [17] Von Hausswolff has denied the accusations of Satanism. [23]
On 13 December 2021, a show at the Dominican Order Saint-Dominique de Bruxelles church in Brussels also received threats. The concerts, which were sold out, nonetheless took place but under police protection. [24] Approximately 100 people turned out to protest, but were more peaceful than the protestors in France. [23]
In 2022 her music was performed at the Union Chapel in London on the opening night of "Organ Reframed". The London Contemporary Orchestra played her music and that of Ipek Gorgun, Abul Mogard and von Hausswolff. [25]
La Roche-sur-Yon is a commune in the Vendée department in the Pays de la Loire region in western France. It is the capital of the department. The demonym for its inhabitants is Yonnais.
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Carl Michael von Hausswolff is a composer, visual artist, and curator based in Stockholm, Sweden. His main tools are recording devices used in an ongoing investigation of electricity, frequency, architectural space, and paranormal electronic interference. Major exhibitions include Manifesta (1996), documenta X (1997), the Johannesburg Biennial (1997), Sound Art - Sound as Media at ICC in Tokyo (2000), the Venice Biennale, and Portikus, Frankfurt (2004). Von Hausswolff received a Prix Ars Electronica award for Digital Music in 2002.
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Ceremony is the second studio album by Swedish musician Anna von Hausswolff. It was released on 18 July 2012 in Sweden by Kning Disk. The album was followed by a worldwide re-release in Europe and North America in June and July 2013, respectively. Ceremony incorporates the pipe organ, which was recorded at the Annedal Church in Gothenburg and became von Hausswolff's first work to include that instrument. Ceremony is primarily a gothic pop record that spans from folk to drone styles, but also art pop, post-rock, noise, and ambient. The death of the singer's grandfather inspired the lyrical content from the album.
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The Miraculous is the third studio album by Swedish musician Anna von Hausswolff. It was released on 13 November 2015 by her own label Pomperipossa Records. As in her previous album Ceremony (2012), The Miraculous contains a pipe organ, which was recorded at the Studio Acusticum concert hall in the Swedish city of Piteå. When writing the album, Von Hausswolff took inspiration from a place where her family used to tell her stories as a child, and the book Källan by Swedish writer Walter Ljungquist.
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Dead Magic is the fourth studio album by Swedish musician Anna von Hausswolff. It was released on 2 March 2018 on City Slang and received critical acclaim.
All Thoughts Fly is the fifth studio album by Swedish musician Anna von Hausswolff, released on 25 September 2020 by Southern Lord Records. The album consists solely of seven pipe organ pieces composed and played by von Hausswolff, who also produced the album with Filip Leyman. It received a positive reception from critics and placed on multiple year-end lists.
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