Penelope Trappes shares single 'A Requiem' ahead of album release

Penelope Trappes   Album ‘A Requiem’ out April 4th via One Little Independent Records   Single ‘A Requiem’ out now     Smartlink Spotify Youtube

“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 and title track ‘A Requiem’ contains the basis for which the entire record represents; it is the “living funeral”. Its foreboding ambience expresses the impending and imminent goodbye.   Penelope says; “A Requiem was written for my ailing parents, whom I’ve now said my goodbyes to. Since back in the UK, alone, it’s taken on another meaning as a connection with the earth under my feet here in the land that is my ancestral home. For the visual, Agnes Haus filmed me in the dead of night on a frozen field in a desolate part of East Sussex to capture the extreme cold and to honour the lonely darkness around two holy oak trees, one living, and one long dead”.   Of the accompanying video, Agnes Haus adds; “We set out unscripted into the 0 degree night with two flood lights, and came across these oak trees. Two hours later, nearly frostbitten, we truly felt like we went through an otherworldly portal into another plane”.   The LP 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.   Photo credit: Jason Renaud   Art credit: Jason Renaud   Live dates   17.04 – Stoke Newington Old Church, London, UK 19.04 – Kapel Begijnhof, 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   Tracklist   Bandorai Platinum Second Spring Sleep Anchor Us To Seabed Floor Red Dove Caro A Requiem Torc Thou Art Mortal   Music credits   All songs composed, performed and produced by Penelope Trappes at Clayton Lane Studio, Glasgow Track 2 cello by Maddie Cutter Tracks 2 + 6 Additional production by Agnes Haus Mixed by Agnes Haus Mastered by Heba Kadry, NYC   Follow Penelope Trappes   Website X Facebook Instagram Bandcamp