Exclusive video premiere of ‘Gertrude’s List’ by VÄLVĒ, taken from the upcoming album ‘Tiny Pilots,’ out November 17th via Slowfoot Records.

There are fleeting resemblances on the wonderful, many-sided ‘Tiny Pilots’ by VÄLVĒ, ranging from the avant-prog of Henry Cow and Dagmar Krause, to Pere Ubu’s ’30 Seconds Over Tokyo’ to the musique concrète of Harrison Birtwistle’s ‘Chronometer’. However, what composer Chlöe Herington particularly brings to VÄLVĒ is a literary sensibility, literary influences: H.E. Bates, W.B. Yates Keith Ridgway, the sci-fi of Clive Parker, Phillip Pullman, John Wyndham.

VÄLVĒ started out as the outlet for composer/performer Chlöe Herington’s compositional work using text and image as the starting point for scores. She collects sounds and diagrams, composing predominantly for bassoon, saxes, electronics and found sounds to explore synaesthetic memory and collective experience.

The band morphed – from what originated as a solo project, performing mainly in art galleries, it grew to include Elen Evans on harp. After moving from galleries back into music venues, they were joined by Chlöe’s Chrome Hoof comrade, Emma Sullivan on bass, microkorg and vocals. Live, the music traverses the realms of noise and improv into songs, punctuated with found sounds and eases into spacey soundscapes. They are currently performing in solo and duo (with Emma) form with the occasional guest performer.

‘Gertrude’s List’ with its mini-maelstroms of electric keyboard arpeggios, supportive trumpet phrases and cosmic blasts of synth imagines the prose of Gertrude Stein torn up and floating in space.

“The visual is inseparable from the sonic for me”

How did the VÄLVĒ project come about?

Chlöe Herington: It started with me urgently needing to let my own ideas out, my way, and poking things to see what sounds they made. I was commissioned to write some music for Tai Shani and got very into sonically reflecting text and image. The next commission needed more sounds so I enlisted Elen on harp and Emma joined after that. We’ve since moved from art galleries to festivals and more traditional venues and enjoy adapting our performance to the situation and space.

Would love if you could tell us about the overall vision / concept when it comes to VÄLVĒ.

I suppose we are a sound art group essentially, making sounds that straddle sound art and music but it’s really about being curious, creating worlds and inviting people on an adventure. The visual is inseparable from the sonic for me and I want to push the immersive elements of the project further. VÄLVĒ doesn’t fit neatly into any little marketing box but I’m happy about that.

How much time and effort went into recording ‘Tiny Pilots’?

A lot of both! Some of the tracks were already written (some being performed but not yet recorded) but they hadn’t found themselves as part of an album yet. The idea behind the record, of us all having a tiny pilot who goes off on adventures when we daydream, then made a place for those tracks and I started work on more of them. We can’t get together regularly to rehearse due to geographical restraints so I record Emma’s parts when we’re together as much as possible but she’s great at interpreting my scribbles and recording remotely. We’ve worked together for so many years, in Chrome Hoof before VÄLVĒ, that we “get” each other musically which is great. I worked on tracks generally one by one, recording and editing until it was finished. All of the music has a visual aspect so that goes along at the same time. I’m self-taught with technical things, art and video so it can take me a while!

When it was finished I sent it to Frank Byng to mix as I trust his ears completely. I felt I didn’t have the skill level to do it and sometimes you have to trust and let go! The video for ‘Gertrude’s List’ took some work as I knew what I wanted from it but had to figure out how to translate that into a video from what was in my head and ear. I love the process though.

<a href="https://valvemusic.bandcamp.com/album/tiny-pilots">Tiny Pilots by VÄLVĒ</a>

Would it be possible to draw any parallels to your debut album? What would be some of the main differences?

Both are thematically linked with similar compositional processes – ‘Geography’ deals with musings and wanderings through (largely actual) geographical places and ‘Tiny Pilots’ is also about places but more fantastical and more about what happens when you get there. Hedgerows feature in the process for both.

The main difference was the time when I’d started work on ‘Tiny Pilots’ before ‘The Quietus’ and ‘State51’ even approached me about what would become ‘Geography’. It was a fast album to write and I had a deadline so didn’t allow myself to be such a flâneuse! It was also locked down and my local map sparked the idea very quickly. Work on ‘Tiny Pilots’ resumed after and I was able to see it better as a whole. It also differs in that Emma and I could experiment together more and Frank mixing and being the ears of reason – more day dreaming than maps. Although making ‘Geography’ in lockdown was a great adventure in itself!

“I start experimenting with the sound, improvising and collating fragments”

How do you usually approach music making? Is it a spontaneous process for you?

It usually starts with an idea triggered by something I’ve read, a conversation, an image or something then my brain goes fuzzy and I ponder it on a walk for a bit. Then it becomes visual so lots of scribbling in notebooks before I start experimenting with the sound, improvising and collating fragments. Some tracks appear very quickly but others can bubble away, evolving slowly. The idea and musical approach is quite spontaneous but I don’t decide to write a track and then just write it.

The album features some incredible guest musicians. Please share some further words about the recording process.

Alex Thomas (Air/Anna Calvi/John Cale) is our old chum from Chrome Hoof – he’s a ridiculous drummer. We swapped a live filmed jam in his studio for a drum session and he did an amazing job, of course. I sent him very rough sketches and then built the track around what he sent back as drums – a new approach for me! The drums and guitar on ‘Man in the Moon’ and ‘Gertrude’s List,’ and the electric guitars on ‘B-612,’ are played rather wonderfully by Craig Fortnam (NSRO/Arch Garrison) – he’s known for his nylon string guitar playing but has secret skills! Sam Barton (Teeth of the Sea/Hirvikolari) guest on trumpet on ‘Lights (sparkled)’ and there is a gaggle of chums singing in the choir on that track and ‘Perfumes of Arabia’. Kavus Torabi is also an old musical comerade who is the master of drones and his harmonium on ‘Perfumes of Arabia’ grounds that track. Jo Spratley (Spratleys Japs) came over and improvised the lead vocals to ‘B-612’ which I did very little editing to. She is a joy to work with, such a creative force, and her contribution completely makes that track. As VÄLVĒ is such an odd kind of thing, it often stays quite insular but working with other people and expanding the sound and accents has been a very lovely experience.

What’s next for you?

There are a couple of records in progress; one that’s very soundscape-based and another using only samples. The third album is underway and I’ve just started training as a blacksmith so my brain’s fizzing with the sampling/instrument-building possibilities that opens up. Heavy metal. Quite literally!

Are you active in any other projects?

Sporadic other things are Hirvikolari (with Sam Barton & Mike Bourne from Teeth of the Sea), Swell Maps C21 and a few collaborative projects are bubbling away. There’s a big one next year but I’ve been sworn to secrecy.

Klemen Breznikar

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