Two - Penelope Trappes

Following her debut album for Optimo Music, antipodean vocalist, musician and soundscaper Penelope Trappes presents her new longplayer ‘Penelope Two’, for Houndstooth. Elements from multiple sources are subsumed by Trappes’ sonic presence; one hears Badalamenti and Julee Cruise’s work for ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Twin Peaks’, Slowdive’s dreampop, the scorched comedowns of early Primal Scream, Colin Newman’s dark melancholia, plus contemporaries like Tropic Of Cancer and Sky H1. These distilled, rarefied creations take echoes as their starting point, with Trappes summoning swathes of tones, textures and emotions into something ethereal but also powerful, like an evocation of spirits. It’s also deeply melodic, with her intimate, maternally-tender voice floating in the middle of each three dimensional, womb-like sonic space. Originally from the Northern Rivers of NSW, Australia Penelope moved to New York to develop experimental projects Locke and Priscilla Sharp, plus her other incarnation with partner Stephen as The Golden Filter.