Description

Brighton-based Australian vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappes has released her fifth full-length album ‘A Requiem’ via London imprint One Little Independent Records. ‘A Requiem’ collects ten haunting, ambient soundscapes – incantations of dreams and nightmares, of death and grief, as well as power and autonomy. Carnal, transcendent cello drones are used to exorcise historical and generational traumas in an evocative and macabre piece of gothic experimentalism.

‘A Requiem’ has received support from the likes of Pitchfork, The Wire, MOJO, Uncut, Record Collector, Bandcamp Daily, NPR, PROG, Electronic Sound, The Line of Best Fit, Crack, Clash Magazine, Nowness, Stereogum, Gorilla vs Bear, Resident Advisor, Futurism Restated, BBC Radio 3’s Unclassified, 6 Music’s Forever Dark, New Music Fix Daily, Lauren Laverne, Deb Grant, Tom Ravenscroft, and many more. This week, she hosted a listening party and Q&A event with Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder. This month, she embarks on her EU and UK tour.

Seeking solitude for what she knew would be an intense and cathartic writing experience, Trappes travelled to Scotland and isolated completely. Amidst meditative and psychedelic states, she channeled demons and accessed parts of herself she’d long desired to cleanse. During candle-lit recording sessions she found herself drawn to cello, an instrument she has no formal training in, she explains, “I always felt an affinity toward the cello, I embraced it, held it, and became one with it as a way to accompany my voice. The nerve-like strings of the cello became external chords of my vocal folds… I scratched on them, leaned into them, and conjured all of the textures I could muster”.

‘A Requiem’ is a musical service in honour of the dead, a sanctuary Trappes built for herself to explore familial chaos and history. “I was looking for an equilibrium between a ‘heaven’ and a ‘hell’” she explains, “screaming out to the wisdom of our foremothers – surfacing and leading me into true strength and beauty. I listened to the sorrow closely. Death is a part of our reality. Inevitable. Omnipresent. But nightmares can be beautiful”.

Tracklist

1.Bandorai

2.Platinum

3.Second Spring

4.Sleep

5.Anchor Us To Seabed Floor

6.Red Dove

7.Caro

8.A Requiem

9.Torc

10.Thou Art Mortal