{"title":"Lost Girls","description":"\u003cp\u003eLost Girls is a collaboration between Patrick Fitzgerald and Heidi Berry. \r\nIn 1997, Patrick had left Kitchens of Distinction (his band of 10 years) and Heidi had left 4AD for whom she had recorded three albums after appearing on This Mortal Coil’s 1991 album ‘Blood’.\r\n\r\nFollowing a speculative phone call they got together and from 1998 to 1999 they wrote and recorded what would become their self titled long-player. \r\nThe band initially started off as a duo but soon ended up as a 5 piece band which included Ashley Wood on guitar, Dave Morgan (The Loft, Primal Scream, Rockingbirds) on drums and Kim Smith on bass duties. \r\nThey released only one single, ‘Needle’s Eye’, but recorded a wealth of material despite their short lifespan.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"menneskekollektivet","title":"Menneskekollektivet","description":"\u003cp\u003eNorwegian duo Lost Girls, artist and writer Jenny Hval and multi-instrumentalist Håvard Volden, release their first album after collaborating for more than ten years. Volden has been playing regularly in Hval's live band for more than a decade, and their duo project goes back to an acoustic collaborative album from 2012, using the moniker Nude on Sand. Instead of resurrecting the previous band, Hval and Volden opted for a fresh start for their 2018 EP Feeling, taking nomenclatural inspiration from the 2006 graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and comics artist Melinda Gebbie. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor their first LP, Hval and Volden booked an actual studio (Øra studios, Trondheim, Norway), which they had never done before. Recording sessions took place in March 2020, even if they felt like the material wasn’t really ready for recording. This left a lot to improvisation, and so \u003ci\u003eMenneskekollektivet \u003c\/i\u003ewas created in-between set structures and the energy of collective exploration. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerhaps this is what makes \u003ci\u003eMenneskekollektivet \u003c\/i\u003eunique: The quality of trying something, to see if the structures fit. In a way this is a more physical version of what Hval has been exploring lyrically over the past decade in her solo work. The title is Norwegian and translates to human collective, which adds to the feeling of a recording made as part of a strange, improvised performance project. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe music flickers; between club beats and improvised guitar textures; between spoken word and melodic vocal textures; between abstract and harmonic synth lines. Throughout the piece, Volden’s guitar and Hval’s voice come across as equals, wandering, wondering, meandering. Sharing the space. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe writing process began with short, more concise forms, but then Volden brought in experiments with seasick synth loops and drum machines, and the work went off on a longer durational tangent, inspired by chance and intuition. This allowed for an unfinished, raw feel, and the song structures and words were expanded and improvised in the studio. Hval says: “There are lots of late night ideas at work, begun as half-asleep, slack vocal takes on top of something really strange Håvard has sent me. We both record before we know what we’re actually doing.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smalltown Supersound","offers":[{"title":"White | LP","offer_id":50417397662027,"sku":"1114689","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/46f8bb1f-beda-44c3-8e5b-8675f8cb3625_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726728671"},{"product_id":"selvutsletter","title":"Selvutsletter","description":"\u003cp\u003eAfter collaborating together for more than a decade, Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden released their first album under the Lost Girls moniker in 2021: \u003ci\u003eMenneskekollektivet\u003c\/i\u003e. The record received rave reviews, including a Best New Music mark at Pitchfork. Now the duo release their second album\u003ci\u003e Selvutsletter\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike its predecessor, the album title is a made up Norwegian word, a word that almost exists. The band’s own translation of Selvutsletter is «self-effacer»: Someone who tries to erase themselves. Someone who is cleaning out themselves. Performing exorcism. Or perhaps just getting older, less interested in their own present self.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 2022, Lost Girls were booked to perform a concert at Les Subsistances in Lyon, together with a few Norwegian performing arts groups performing their pieces. The band decided to use the opportunity to create all new material, and think of it as a coherent piece. Working in tandem, with Volden creating beats and wild sets of guitar chords and Hval restructuring the parts, creating melodies, words and adding more sounds, they started spiraling into unchartered territory of shorter, more concise and melodic songs than their debut LP Menneskekollektivet.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs the material developed, words already embedded in the chords, guitar sounds and rhythms began to dance around. Lyrics about cities after dark, music rituals and band practices of the 90s, and the early days of the internet began to take shape. These were Hval's own memories of her hometown and her obsession with creating music as a way of leaving it behind or even setting it on fire. Selvutsletter is, in that sense, about retracing Hval and Volden's steps back to how it felt to discover music, the intensely physical and communal experience of creating something. Certain tracks even go back further, to discover possible happenings in Norwegian towns and cities before any of us were born, using elements of faux folk singing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere \u003ci\u003eMenneskekollektivet\u003c\/i\u003e was about exploring club beats, and expanding and trying out structures,\u003ci\u003e Selvutsletter\u003c\/i\u003e is about disappearing in experiences. It combines the intuitive, late night feel of Lost Girls’ previous work with experimental rock music as its object. The result is more adventurous than nostalgic: A fiery, bilingual whirl of colours, words, vegetation and electricity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smalltown Supersound","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50971205402955,"sku":"2051789","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/LOST_GIRLS_-_SELVUTSLETTER_-_PACKSHOT_858c3d2c_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1734098757"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_1ba9231e_thumbnail_4096_cf3d5b60-9fee-4936-b782-911325373756.jpg?v=1726728649","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/lost-girls.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}