Penelope Trappes: A Requiem 
(One Little Independent Records)
Out Now
Aussie-born Brighton-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, newly signed to One Little Independent, has released an ambitious set of little commercial intent but high artistic regard, conceptual and versed in the church. MK Bennett sits in admiration.
“ MEPHIST. Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer,
Conspir’d against our God with Lucifer,
And are for ever damn’d with Lucifer.
FAUSTUS. Where are you damn’d?
MEPHIST. In hell.
FAUSTUS. How comes it, then, that thou art out of hell?
MEPHIST. Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it: Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?”
Excerpt From
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus / From the Quarto of 1604
Christopher Marlowe
Some art, whether visual or otherwise, carries a weight of meaning to the artist and the world that makes the world shift a little, whether the world notices it or not. Music of depth is not necessarily uneasy or difficult, but it requires a stillness, a slowing down of everyday motion to soak in its wonder. The pain is writ large here, but it is also a balm, an ageless lament for the post-industrial horrors of womanhood.
There are creatures at the bottom of the sea that can never see the light, but they surely know that light exists because they create their own. This music has little precedent in modernity, maybe Julee Cruise or Bat For Lashes, but it is more ancient than that, fighting a monster it can hardly see, an inarticulate speech of the heart raging into the night and whispering to the breaking morning. An appropriate response to this music would be to recoil. It’s monolithic insistence on its desires, the way it seeks absolution in its every drawn string and haunted melody, makes you want to look away, to avoid eye contact with private ghosts and public horror.
A Requiem is a new kind of ceremony for the old skin, a work of thematic brilliance, churchified in the extreme and art in the absolute. It asks questions about adulthood and parenthood, about responsibility and abuse. It burns in search of its answers, finds its solace in Mother Earth and Pagan tradition, and sometimes sounds ancient and without time itself. It starts with Bandorai, (The Banduri were female druids), a mournful wail of cello and vocal that is eerie and captivating, pain replayed in four line stanzas. Backed mainly by wordless and beautiful near near-monastic voices. It is a deliberately haunting statement of intent, a clue to the remaining work.
A number of the songs have visuals, simpatico and sympathetic, cinematic shorthand for the narrative, and while Bandorai has a monochrome backdrop of fire and darkened hallways, a close-up of Penelope wherein her eyes tell the story as much as her voice. Not everything seen can be spoken, but we can try. Platinum may be a rumination, a lament for that most famous of women, Marilyn Monroe, a symbol of the ancient and modern feminine, a life lived in pain and expected to smile, never complain. The arrangements are so well done, you don’t always notice the minimalist approach, as Platinum introduces drums that sound like tombstones closing, great slabs of beats falling into each other, keeping the time glacial. Vivid and spider-like, with Gothic veins running throughout. Second Spring, a short piece, machine-made field music, digital yet rural, haunted machinery.
Sleep simply aches, a death dream for patriarchy or an ancient tale of seafaring resignation, it heaves and rocks and moves in waves, stumbling towards its end, while the striking visuals that accompany it are an exorcism, a miscarriage, a reckoning, a Milton quote that becomes a blood pact/oath that becomes a protective circle, drama laid bare and open by Maxine Peake and Kate Dickie and Penelope herself, adding different interpretive layers to the songs already expansive world. Breathtaking. Anchor Us To Seabed Floor is meditative, almost a resolution to the siren song of Sleep, a calming, choral and wordless display of modern classical, sparing in its actual accompaniment but full all the same.
Red Dove may be about the violently weighted expectation of adulthood/womanhood, with visuals reminiscent of Carol Morley, it navigates the words carefully, precisely, with a slightly Bat For Lashes backdrop, an arpeggiated keyboard that tracks like steamed bellows. It occasionally shudders to a halt, only to return, each repeat sounding hopeful and serene yet suggesting unrest. Caro is a tiny but detailed voice composition that leads into A Requiem proper, Mother Earth as both nurturing and vengeful. A stark warning, a low cello, joined by lighter strings and angel’s voices, a ghost dance that emerges blinking at the morning light, called home back to the Earth.
Torc, which could be the introduction to one of Pink Floyd’s more dystopian post-fame epics, segues into Thou Art Mortal, a finale of seeming hope, warm strings and calming seascapes, a heavily vocalised and ancient song of stone, a spring equinox, a rebirth of nature and ritual. A work of pure cinematic art in the truest sense and a rollercoaster of nerve-shredding emotion, sit with this enigmatic wonder, and it will reward you countless times.
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All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
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