‘Part banshee-voiced member of a witches’ coven, part Sweden’s highbrow answer to Mogwai, Anna von Hausswolff is a genuine one-off…the boldness of her vision is compelling’ – THE GUARDIAN
Seated at the historic 1834 organ, the launch of this year’s festival in Birmingham’s Town Hall is lead by the formidable fingertips of Anna Von Hauswolff.
Since her debut 2010 album ‘Singing from the Grave’, she has gradually developed from a more self-contained, intimate chamber-pop sound to a gargantuan, ethereal beast of sonority which totally envelops the listener, evident in most recent 2015 album ‘The Miraculous’.
The classically trained vocalist and composer draws from her background in avant-garde music as well as her love of black metal to create thundering dark clouds of drone and doom, lined with a beguiling light of fragility and emotional sensitivity; a sound unequivocally hers.
Town Hall’s infamous organ is the pulsating heart of the glorious architecture of the building and integral to it’s musical history and future. With 6,000 pipes standing at 32 feet high, this recording breaking instrument – the largest in England at it’s conception – is comparable with the most powerful of cathedral organs around the world.
And now Anna, fresh off the back of her 2016 tour in support of experimental cult heroes of noise-rock, SWANS, fuses tradition with guitar driven band and live electronics in what couldn’t possibly be a more perfect setting – a gothic tour de force of a show not to be missed!
