Penelope Trappes

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. Formally trained in opera and jazz in her youth, Penelope swaddles her voice and poetics in brooding atmospherics underpinned by subterranean drone. She 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. She also released an album of reworks, ‘Penelope Redeux’, with contributions by Cosey Fanni Tutti, Mogwai, Félicia Atkinson and Nik Colk Void, and the cassette, ‘Mother’s Blood,’ a vocal-free meditative reinterpretation of 'Penelope Three’. 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 in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. “Summoning the great ghosts of vintage 4AD and Kranky, the Australian singer and producer makes inky dream pop that’s as heavy and welcoming as a weighted blanket.” - Philip Sherburne (Pitchfork)