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“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
“Starkly intimate and surreal - like watching yourself mourn intense tragedy from an outsider’s vantage point... unsettling in a way that feels magical” – Bandcamp
On April 4th, Brighton-based Australian vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappes will release her fifth full-length album ‘A Requiem’. It comes alongside news of her signing to 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.
New single ‘Red Dove’ is melancholic but aerial, recalling an “Armageddon dream” of Penelope’s that ended with the vivid image of a boy holding a red dove. She tells us; “I felt like this dream was about humanity becoming numb, stripped of emotion, and completely lost in their pain. Sleepwalking. Swallowing the Bitter Pill. The general acceptance of destructive, violent and toxic social norms. The Red dove being a conduit of the world's negativity, yet held peacefully in the hands of an innocent child”.
The track’s accompanying video by Agnes Haus was inspired by Werner Herzog’s 1993 documentary, ‘Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia’. Penelope says; “A distinct feeling about the fraught existential enigma of the human experience was hanging in the desolated air. For the music, I wanted ultra-soft vocals to say harsh things like a kind of beautiful decay. Months later, I was digging through old Werner Herzog documentaries and came across ‘Bells from the Deep’. In one of the chapters, Yuri Tarassov, a travelling sorcerer and exorcist, absolutely entranced me into the world of cult leader behaviour and I really wanted Agnes Haus and I to create a visual around the aura of 90s evangelical superstars. I was fascinated by the intensity of Yuri’s followers’ hysterical reactions - and I think there are correlations to modern politics in 2025. The followers have complete faith that Yuri can relieve their emotional and psychological distress. The collective power of persuasion, no matter how outlandish, feeds the hunger for a sense of belonging… which leads to the potential for power-hungry personalities to convince others to gather under the damaged wings of the world – A violent hope”.
Agnes Haus, fresh from directing Mogwai’s ‘Fanzine Made Of Flesh’ which also guest starred Penelope, adds; “Penelope showed me the Herzog documentary, and we had this idea that Penelope would play the cult leader of a sect called Red Dove. We filmed the cult footage in a bizarre old Glasgow lawn bowls club, and then bought an old VCR /TV and filtered video through it, recorded footage to videocassette and re-filmed the TV. It was a longer process than anticipated, but well worth it to really try to send Penelope back through time as an evangelical leader filled with regret over a dark event.”
Penelope has also announced further EU and UK live dates including an appearance at Roadburn Festival.
‘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”.
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.”
Penelope released her acclaimed trilogy, ‘Penelope One’, ‘Two’ and ‘Three’, on Fabric’s Houndstooth label. In between instalments of her ambitious trilogy, Penelope released a clutch of both experimental and more dreampop-oriented EPs. She demonstrated her versatility in the extended 25-minute deep-listening composition ‘Gnostic State’, and the arpeggiated electronics and minimalist songwriting on the ‘Eel Drip’ EP, which was accompanied by image and film inspired by Francesca Woodman’s 1970s series of nude self-portraits with eels. She also released an album of reworks, ‘Penelope Redeux’, with contributions by Cosey Fanni Tutti, Mogwai, and Nik Colk Void, and the cassette, ‘Mother’s Blood,’ a vocal-free meditative reinterpretation of 'Penelope Three’ concluding with the live-scoring of a 1-hour film at Sonica Festival.
Penelope’s fourth album, ‘Heavenly Spheres’, was released in 2023 on her own Nite Hive imprint, was composed using just piano, voice and an old reel-to-reel tape deck during a two-week artist residency for Britten Pears Arts at the house where the composer, teacher and musicologist Imogen Holst lived in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Most recently, 2024’s ‘Hommelen’, the austere and beautifully severe result of her Halldorophone residency at EMS Stockholm was released on Paralaxe Editions.
In the live realm, Penelope’s music expands into tidal waves and surges of tension with hypnotising gothic live visuals by Agnes Haus. Select shows are accompanied by a live band, and other times performing solo, she has shared the stage with the likes of William Basinski, Mary Lattimore, and NYX drone choir, and she has extensively toured the UK, Australia, and Europe over the last five years, including a pivotal live performance with the London Contemporary Orchestra at Southbank Centre.
Live dates
17.04 – Stoke Newington Old Church, London, UK
19.04 – 4AD, Diksmuide, BE
20.04 – Roadburn Festival, Tilburg, NL
25.04 – Sacred Trinity Church, Manchester, UK
26.04 – The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, UK
02.05 – Alphabet, Brighton, UK |
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