Swedish artist Murex shares ‘Mothers Bells’, the new single from her debut album Inventio, out 25th September via Young. It arrives with an accompanying self-directed video.
Honouring her mother, ‘Mothers Bells’ explores a longing for understanding and forgiveness. A set of bells hanging in the hallway of her mother’s home became an image Murex often returned to – an imaginary compass and fixed point of orientation amid uncertainty. “These bells, hung up so high so I could always see them, were leading me the right way,” says Murex.
In its reaching rather than its resolving, ‘Mothers Bells’ is the song that states the album’s purpose most explicitly. “I never wanted to make a record that comes up with the answers or solutions,” says Murex. “It is most about wanting to understand, connect, and forgive.” The accompanying video is self-directed, as every visual on Inventio has been. Murex is a visual artist as well as a musician, and the record is shadowed throughout by her own stark pencil drawings – vegetal creatures devouring a body, swans flocking into the shape of a crest of arms.
Listen to ‘Mothers Bells’ here
Murex – Mothers Bells
‘Mothers Bells’ follows previous single ‘Flock Of Swans Fly In V’s’, highlighted by The Guardian for its “vision of sprites playing hide-and-seek around a glitching harp” from an album they describe as “thrillingly innovative.” Alongside debut single ‘Massacre’ and the trumpet-scored ‘Hardness Of A Silverspoon’, it forms part of a run that has established Murex as a truly singular new artist.
Murex’s world continues to reveal itself in fragments. Artists making pop music today are expected to calcify as one easily consumable version of themselves, or capitulate wildly to the capricious algorithm. Murex is already an accomplished songwriter, propelling the work of women challenging those constraints their way, and with Inventio, she spreads her wings beyond that.
Deeply informed by storytelling and the spirit of Nordic folklore, the album unfurls as a glitching, glimmering constellation of 10 tracks, charting a journey to confront body dysmorphia, control and a fracturing sense of self – each track spinning out from the last as Murex untangles herself from that state, reaching toward creative and emotional liberation, all set to ethereal, amorphous avant-pop. The record takes its name from Bach’s Inventions, which Murex played growing up on piano, and that Baroque spirit runs throughout: trilling polyphonic textures, melodies that drive amorphously from one track into the next, her lush vocal harmonies rising above it all.
MUREX
INVENTIO
Inventio is released 25th September via Young.
(download high res Inventio album artwork here)
Tracklisting
- Massacre
- Been Here Too Long
- The Spire
- Hardness of a Silverspoon
- Biased
- Puddle
- Flock Of Swans Fly In V’s
- Muzak
- 9. Mothers Bells
- Inventio
Praise for Murex
“From her thrillingly innovative debut album, the delightful vision of sprites playing hide-and-seek around a glitching harp.” – The Guardian
“There’s a magnetic force to Murex – the amorphous song structure becoming truly hypnotic.” – Clash
“A vivid piece of electronic production, channeling anger, rage and anxiety into a tightly controlled but emotionally overwhelming track.” – Rombo Magazine
“Hardness of a Silverspoon, by Swedish artist Murex, is a low-hanging cloud to the face, all gothic, choral and chilling, like Boards of Canada fronted by an anguished vampire.” – Line Noise
“What makes her sound truly singular, though, is its distinctly Scandinavian atmosphere, shaped by Nordic folklore and the Swedish landscape”- Highcloud
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