For the last decade, Anna von Hauswolff, the daughter of Carl Michael von Hausswolff co-founder of the imagined country of Elgaland-Vargaland, has dealt in a solemn funereal music of effects and delay-laden drone released on labels like City Slang and Southern Lord, composed and performed on the pipe organ. Recordings like "Live at Montreux Jazz Festival" elucidate this space between a traditionally classical instrument, and her approach which shares affinities with contemporary doom metal and drone rock. It is in this zone that her studio albums yoke their eerie timbre, producing a "Doomy Epic from a Supernatural Talent", in its weave of drone-inspired 'funeral pop', with added weight and sonic gravitas from producer, Randall Dunn. Her previous album, "All Thoughts Fly", was a collection of instrumentals performed on a replica of a 17th century baroque organ in a cathedral in Gothenburg, Germany, and followed on a set of collaborations with rock titans SWANS, and doom metal band, SUNN O))). So it is that much more of an unexpected turn that the 'funeral pop' component of her music would come fully to the fore, swathed in more straightforwardly melodic structures, and the voice taking the place of the dominant instrument over that of the organ. For which von Hausswolff has enlisted the talents of an artist that Jazzwise lauded; “The music is intentionally puzzling, teased from a meltdown of tropes from jazz, groove and electronic dance music", in the multi-instrumentalist and saxophonist Otis Sandsjö. This meeting of von Hausswolff's dronescapes, and the structural punctuation of Sandsjö's hard-hitting jazz-rock, comprise the framework for "Iconoclasts" song-based album of instrumental dirge and soaring lyricism. Further rejecting some of the characterization of her doom-organ iconography, "A ‘High Priestess of Satanic Art’? This Organist Can Only Laugh", von Hausswolff brings this new pop-focused sound of an Exhilarating, Euphoric Goth Songcraft” to a string of dates across North America, including two nights at San Francisco's Brick & Mortar.
