This Friday, the 14th of March, is the first outing of my new project Intah. I am so excited to be embarking on this sonic path with Martin Reisle on cello and vocals, and Jordan Barnes-Crouse crafting soundscapes and textures. Please join us in witnessing the beginning of a new musical chapter that will evolve to deepen my ties to the sweet and eerie, the spacious and odd.
Hope to see you this Friday at Merge.
Not too long ago – mere days really – I posted a little note on my facebook wall asking for someone to come forward and save me from my bio writing woes.
Who should appear with words in tow?
The one and only Shane Koyczan!
Shane and I are old friends and so when I sat down to read the words he had penned in my honour I very nearly sobbed. Compliments of the highest order that even as I go to post this to share them with you are making me blush.
“Jess Hill plays eardrums as if playing guitar is just a hobby. There is a rich mercy to her voice. One that reveals itself slowly… like a good book… chapter after chapter… pulling us toward a conclusion that we don’t want to have happen because we can’t bare the thought of an ending. She pulls the sound out of herself like a thread. She unravels her own tapestry to offer you the raw material so you can build your own warmth. Her songs remind us to bundle ourselves against this cold world; to keep heat between us like a wild animal turned happy captive through a satisfied curiosity… an unending wonder. If you listen to an audience that is listening to Jess you can just make out the slight sear as there blues turn red. Jess Hill’s music is sound and colour waltzing down staircases like laughter tumbling toward safety… she is the last petal on the stem after all the “love me not’s” have been pulled away. Jess Hill is the love.” Shane Koyczan (poet)
Nothing I write will ever compare to that but knowing that my face is likely the colour of a beet and my heart is fluttering like a moth storm tells me that I don’t feel comfortable sending it out into the world of press as my bio. 😉
I am nonetheless extremely touched and I think I might even be glowing. You tell me…?
My memory is leaning into tales of vague secrecy…pouring through the piles of moments and assessing the facts, as they are remembered, mutated, transformed. It is a wonder to trace the lines of my face against the mirrors reflection. I pause to line up, adjust the angle and sidle slowly up against the glass. I am two sides of one coin. I am on the other side of myself. From both perspectives I am sipping fireberry tea and feeling sympathetic to the duality of all things and the reconciling it requires. I know there are no coincidences, these are synchronicities and they lead to songs.
Make a wish.
Jess Hill 
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