Swedish artist Murex announces her debut album, Inventio,  will drop on  September 25 via Young (Jamie xx). “Making this album felt like a return to my physical body,” shares Murex, “while simultaneously realising that it will never encompass the totality of who I am. Each moment of finding is getting lost, and while my body stores the marks, the different versions of myself continue to evade and dissolve.” The artist made the deliberate choice to take the focus away from her physical self in the work: that is a protest, but also a tribute to the countless versions that form one person. “It’s not about disappearing or being anonymous,” she says, “more about loosening the grip of appearance, and letting the work exist without being defined by it.”

The Latin word for inventions, inventio, was very much a core sentiment for the artist when writing. “I’m a different person even from when this began taking shape,” she says. But Murex made the album not actually knowing it was an album. “I learned that, after all these years working, I can surprise myself,” she reflects, “then, trust my inner process and subconscious to make something that feels both me and beyond me.” Songwriting is always a playful, experimental process—but she began to feel emotionally attached to certain ideas coming to the fore: “I didn’t feel like I wanted to let them go, and that was a new feeling. I had a motherly instinct for them.” The record was made across three years: one spent doing introverted, intimate writing, and two crafting in her studio in Stockholm: “That first year felt like a secret even to me.”

Singing has and remains Murex’s way of claiming space, and so the album began to present itself through chords, harmonies, and lyrical motifs. Images of the natural world rub up against the harsh and metallic, finding clarity in the contrasts. “I never wanted to make a record that comes up with the answers or solutions—it is most about wanting to understand, connect, and forgive,” she says. And it was liberating, too, to create a musical document of how much she has evolved across its making: “each song brought me a new feeling.”

“Massacre”, the first album’s explosive, thrashing first single and oldest track, is Murex at her most vulnerable. “It’s where I feel naked,” she says. Despite this need for catharsis, the record resists heaviness in its more playful and ambitious strides of production. As Inventio continues, sounds warp and fizz, the acoustic judders into the glitchy, cellos grow gargantuan, and strings melt.

Finishing the album was a more structured process, recording many of the songs already fully formed across a summer in Stockholm, where the mornings were for swimming and the afternoon for production. Tracks evolved organically: “Hardness of the Silverspoon”, defined by its rebel yells and harmonising screams, was originally meant to be lyriced, but once in the studio, it spoke for itself. “I felt the most urgent sense with it to just let go, and screaming into the void wouldn’t feel the same with words,” says Murex. The artist also plays the trumpet, her childhood instrument. The spirited “Muzak” began as a voice memo, and was then recorded with live piano and made more full-bodied. “I thought this song would be the breather on the album, the calm. It decided otherwise.” Adding in collaborators like Pelle Westlin and Isak Hedtjärn (clarinet, flute) and Elvira Anderfjärd (cello, backing vocals) gave the record “extra arms” and free-spirited improvisation. Its visual world continues to grow, with music videos all directed by Murex.

“Making this album gave me back authority and power,” Murex affirms. “I feel like I’ve tried so many different ways of doing the creative process, and the only thing I hadn’t tried was truly letting go. I feel very proud of it: I didn’t think that I could do something this cohesive on my own. I have new things to discover now. I hope it’s just as freeing to listen to.”

Murex
Inventio
Young

Massacre
Been Here too Long
The Spire
Hardness of a Silverspoon
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Biased
Puddle
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Flock of Swans Fly in V’s
Muzak
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Mothers Bells
Inventio

Pre-order Inventio by Murex HERE