Intense Records

A Requiem *CD*

£9.99 (£11.99 incl. VAT)

Brighton-based Australian vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappes releases 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. 

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.”