There are few artists who have risen as high in our estimations over the past couple of months as Ingri Høyland, the Copenhagen-based, Norwegian-born producer and musician behind Hôy La. After meeting her at Vill Vill Vest, we brought you the ‘narcotic, heavy, art-electronica’ of her single Purple a few months later, and now she’s back with more new music. She’s got a debut EP, X-heads, on the way, and we’re delighted to bring you the premiere of the video of her new song Saturday.
Saturday is the sound of Høyland pushing her music into new territory, leaving behind opioid haze of her early work for something more muscular and faster, a choppy, tumbling electronica track that gains an otherworldly edge from the brief snatches of vocals, fuzzily beamed in like transmissions from the interzone, and the sombre, serious flair of the trumpets. Hôy La went to Japan a couple of months ago to play some shows (‘I needed to mix things up and seek new inspiration. And without a manager or an international booking agent it was up to me to set everything up. A well written e-mail can really get you places’), and it was there she met the performance artist and taxidermist Chika Matsuda. The video, made by Ingri and Jonas Svarstad Lien, tells Matsuda’s story, following her around her work and her day as she details what she does and philosophises on the way she lives her life. Høyland says:
‘All I knew about Chika at first was that she was working with dead animals. As we got to know her she turned out to be the warmest and most inspiring person I have ever met. This song and X-heads in general is about my best and worst woolgathering and Chika’s story really fitted well into that. Because of that, we decided to make the video just about her. We wanted to tell her story.’
Hôy La’s debut EP X-heads is out on February 22.