Valet

Valet biography

There are multiple artists who go by the name Valet. 1) Valet is Portland, Oregon musician Honey Owens. Owens played a key role in the development of the electronic group Nudge and music collective Jackie-O Motherfucker, blessing both groups with her singularly haunting voice, instrumentation, and aesthetic approach. Valet's debut, 'Blood Is Clean' was originally released as a limited edition CDr in 2006 by Yarnlazer (the label Owens co-runs with White Rainbow's Adam Forkner). It saw wider release on Kranky Records in the Spring of 2007. According to Owens, the songs were formed "out of a natural and spontaneous process as separate incidents of recording over a 5 month period from January to May 2006 in single, live takes with additional tracking sparingly added." Her goal was "to make music that was not neccessarily of me, but rather to be a medium channeling sounds from an unknown place, opening up and spilling out onto the computer-tape." The cryptic, mesmerizing sound pallete was inspired by "lucid dreams and physical artifacts that appeared to me daily and that hinted at a sound-world of Haitian Voodoo drumming, various shamanic dreamtime musics, the Velvet Underground, and the 'Fourth-World' concepts of Jon Hassell". Kranky also released Valet's second album Naked Acid in February 2008, to widespread acclaim. During an interview Owen's claimed that all the albums songs were about Portland Oregon or specific personal events that had ocurred there. The albums standout track "Fire" was written as a love song to things that destroy you...in Owen's case her struggles with drug use, which resonated with a relationship break-up that was consuming her friend Brian Foote and fellow band member from Nudge. 2) Valet is Minneapolis, MN musician Robin Kyle. He and his rotating cast of a backing band released their debut, "The Glamour is Contagious", on 2024 Records in 2002. Their follow-up, "Life On the Installment Plan", was released in 2004. They disbanded shortly after.