(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Basilica Hudson is hosting a Halloween night (Thursday, October 31) performance event called the Blakk Ballon Ball, featuring YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN — an Asian, Indigenous and Diasporic Art Collective from Canada; Jenny Hval, a multidisciplinary and transgressive artist from Norway whose music overflows with intimate detail and surrealistic bodily imagery, weaving experimental pop with injections of mythology, theory and gender politics; and Tanz Praxis featuring C. Lavender. 

Founded in late 2007 by performance artists alaskaB and Ruby Kato Attwood, YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN are known to put on dazzling musical theatre performances in giant monochrome paper sets, sometimes in far out places, like the Montreal Eaton Centre Food Court at 2am. Aesthetically, they blend the poorly appropriated styles of Noh, Chinese Opera, Chinese, Japanese and First Nations Mythology, Black & White Television, Psychedelia & Rock Operatics into a sensory feast of nigh-monochromatic costuming, unique hand-built musical instruments and their own mangaesque cardboard ‘NEVERFLAT’ style of 2.5D set design, with makeup influenced by Kabuki and Kiss. YT // ST is based in Montreal & Toronto.

“Jenny Hval doesn’t just sing songs. Rather, she constructs them out of layers of perfectly elongated lyrics that she stretches between guitar chords and keyboard notes. Her provocative music is dissonant and devastating and, at the same time, completely riveting.”

— TIME [7 Scandinavian Bands You Should Listen To Now]

Recognized as one of “7 Scandinavian Bands You Should Listen To Now” by TIME, Jenny Hval is a multidisciplinary and transgressive artist whose music is obscurely complex, present and provocative. Her new album, “Innocence Is Kinky” (Rune Grammofon) overflows with intimate detail and surrealistic bodily imagery, weaving experimental pop with injections of mythology, theory and gender politics. For this first tour of North America, Jenny Hval (vocals, synth) and band — Håvard Volden (electric guitars, synth, electronics) and Kyrre Laastad(drums, synth) — will put on an arresting performance that will be a perfect accompaniment to Hval ‘s confident presentation on record.

Pitchfork’s Stephen Deusner says, “On a protracted bridge, her voice warps and mutates and turns the syllables into pure sounds. Hval goes deliberately flat, savoring the pulsating dissonance, until all that is left is a high, tensile note that wavers in either distress or desire.  Rather than alienating, it’s actually inviting; a strange and powerful performance.”

Tanz Praxis is an upstate New York-based music/choreography/film group featuring LN Foster (Wall Wymn, Drums Like Machine Guns) and C. Lavender. Both members have extensive dance backgrounds from childhood and wish to merge the worlds of experimental sound and dance through film and performance.