Box featuring debossed Hildegard symbol; clear vinyl, printed vellum inner sleeve, fold-out booklet, three 300mm X 300mm inserts featuring single artwork for Jour 1, Jour 2, Jour 3. Single sleeve jacket featuring debossed Hildegard symbol; clear vinyl, printed vellum inner sleeve, and fold-out booklet. Design and cover art: Minji Kim Single cover art: Thomas Laprade Art Direction: Melissa Matos Hildegard is the new project from experimental singer-songwriter Helena Deland and multi-instrumentalist and producer Ouri (Ourielle Auvé). On their self-titled debut album, Deland’s folk background balances against Ouri’s world of electronic and dance music. Over eight days in a studio, the Montreal-based musicians discovered an innate creative connection, building and bouncing ideas off of one another, developing an intuitive approach to composition and sound. The resulting record, Hildegard, is wholly its own. Eight tracks fuse together into a sonic sphere, named for the eight days spent together. The meeting place sounds something like dusk, or dawn. From this alchemy arises the figure of Hildegard, a woman of science, music, and spirituality. A symbol of nurturing strength, a saint with healing powers. In her 12th century presence, Hildegard wrote prophecies, poems, and treatises; she experienced otherworldly visions and recorded them, passing them down through generations. Deland and Ouri invoke Hildegard as a carrier of the magic they felt working with each other, the separate entity that was born as they blended together. Artist Melissa Matos developed a visual language for the project that reflects this melding and switching of identities, imagining Hildegard as both a contemporary and historic presence. Hildegard is out now on section1.
