The Blessed Madonna

Godspeed might be Marea Stamper's debut album, but it's not exactly her first. She completed a whole different LP and then shelved the project entirely when the pandemic hit. Fast forward to 2021 and she was without a record deal, her father had died and the future was far from certain. The party seemed like it might have been over. But instead of giving up, she started all over again. Stamper dusted off a few tracks, made some new ones and sent them around. Three years and "thousands of hours" of work later, she finished Godspeed, a living, breathing behemoth of a house music album whose journey was so complex and unpredictable that the title wasn't even decided until just a day before finishing the LP. The result is an all-encompassing look at a seasoned raver, expressed in an age-old way: music that celebrates the power of music itself, surrounded by friends and family to share in that joy with. The album is a labour of love, an homage to Stamper's roots that also updates it for the future. It's a little bit retro, a little bit futuristic, a bit pop and a bit avant-garde, full of sputtering drum patterns and left turns that frame the rawness of proto-house as the sound of now. It's uplifting but realistic about the world, covering the spectrum of human emotions instead of focusing on escapism. Or, as Stamper says: "Same shit, new soundtrack."