Description
Release Date Friday 4th April 2025
All pre-orders will be dispatched/made ready for collection on that day.
On April 4th, Brighton-based Australian vocalist, producer, and
multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappes will release her new
full-length album ‘A Requiem’. ‘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.
“Trappes has centered herself in the narrative while solidifying a sound that was
already spellbinding to begin with” Pitchfork
“A striking work of evolution and deconstruction… meticulous with fine detail, and
trusting of the supernatural forces that elevate it.” The Wire
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 raw, spiritual journey. Astonishingly vulnerable, and a compelling
examination of loss - the threat of it, the meaning of it, the coming to terms with
it. Across an album of breathtaking compositions, we are asked to bear witness to
a sacred personal experience like no other.
Despite formal vocal training in opera and jazz when she was younger, it wasn’t
until after her daughter was born that Penelope began writing her own music.
She says coming into music later has been eye opening, and she laments the fact
that women past 30 are too often discarded by the music industry; “Creativity
doesn’t go away when you get older, it flourishes, changes, grows like all of life,”
she says, “it amazes me that this is still something for society to wrap their heads
around.”
Tracklisting
Bandorai
Platinum
Second Spring
Sleep
Anchor Us To
Seabed Floor
Red Dove
Caro
A Requiem
Torc
Thou Art
Mortal
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