"Absolutely beautiful." - John Doran
What is VÄLVĒ? Folk lullabies re-imagined by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Found-sound collages interrupted by Welsh language orations and sudden outbursts of fuzz bass. Gleaming synthpop workouts that collapse into swirling dreamscapes of sax and harp. Tiny sounds opening out onto the epic. Hi-tech and no-tech, deployed with equal measures of discipline and abandon. Carefully sculpted disorder. Uncanny geometries of noise and melody. Dizzy and gleeful and drawn in notebooks. That is VÄLVĒ.
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 been 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.
Press:
“Chlöe Herington and Emma Sullivan’s astonishing soundscapes intrigue and aesthetically reward in equal measure. The almost monosyllabic lyrics — invocations of dreams — delivered as subdued declamations have a metronomic quality that punctuates the delicately pulsating, minimalist sound of the accompaniment… …Poetic, politically engaged and engrossing. A masterpiece.” [Morning Star]
“Like a rural one-woman Radiophonic Workshop, Chlöe constructs imaginative and allusive journeys that pick at abstract thought along the way… …A real work of value and love, Tiny Pilots defies easy categorisation…” [Freq]
"It seems then that with V Ä L V Ē, Chlöe Herington wants to create a lingering series of moments and movements that will sit differently with everyone who encounters them. These sounds aren't designed to sit on top of memories or prop them up but rather they are precisely shaped to weave through the mind like blood through a capillary. A vital cog in the mechanics of many an ensemble over the years, Herington and company's V Ä L V Ē is a complex machine that is now almost ready to crash into our lives. Best ready our senses then." -Eoin Murphy (The Quietus) Full article HERE
"If Brian Eno invented a time machine and took Steve Reich on a tour of 17th century olde England and recorded their trip on a handheld radio, this would be the result. And yes, that is a good thing." - Jason Warner, Brighton Source
"Much smitten by this. Discovered by a sheer and we should say, happy accident by way of a facebook posting, this is the rather delightfully transfixing ‘atmos #1’ by the London based collective V Ä L V Ē. A teaser track culled from a forthcoming EP by the name ‘#1 [the theosophical society]’ which i’m sure you’ll agree manages to craft something of a daydreaming wonderland imagining one suspects, a snoozing magic woodland adored with hypnotically shimmering bowed chimes and music boxes, all very serenely captivating and alluringly twinklesome not to mention playful and cutely becoming, in short, Reich for reception classes and something that ought to be on the radar of those whose listening loves stray fondly to the lulling tones of the Clangers and the Moomins." - https://marklosingtoday.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/v-a-l-v-e/
