An absolutely exquisite double header featuring two titans of the underground. 

Brighton-based Australian vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappes 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, which was accompanied by image and film inspired by Francesca Woodman’s 1970s series of nude self-portraits with eels. She also released an album of reworks, ‘Penelope Redeux’, with contributions by Cosey Fanni Tutti, Mogwai, and Nik Colk Void, and the cassette, ‘Mother’s Blood,’ a vocal-free meditative reinterpretation of 'Penelope Three’ concluding with the live-scoring of a 1-hour film at Sonica Festival.

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 at the house where the composer, teacher and musicologist Imogen Holst lived in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Most recently, 2024’s ‘Hommelen’, the austere and beautifully severe result of her Halldorophone residency at EMS Stockholm was released on Paralaxe Editions.

‘A Requiem’, her first album on One Little Independent Records, received support from the likes of Pitchfork, The Wire, MOJO, Uncut, Record Collector, Bandcamp Daily, NPR, PROG, Electronic Sound, The Line of Best Fit, Crack, Clash Magazine, Nowness, Stereogum, Gorilla vs Bear, Resident Advisor, Futurism Restated, BBC Radio 3’s Unclassified, 6 Music’s Forever Dark, New Music Fix Daily, Lauren Laverne, Deb Grant, Tom Ravenscroft, and many more. She hosted a listening party and Q&A event with Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder.

In the live realm, Penelope’s music expands into tidal waves and surges of tension with hypnotising gothic live visuals by Agnes Haus. Select shows are accompanied by a live band, and other times performing solo, she has shared the stage with the likes of William Basinski, Mary Lattimore, and NYX drone choir, and she has extensively toured the UK, Australia, and Europe over the last five years, including a pivotal live performance with the London Contemporary Orchestra at Southbank Centre

“There are passages of profound beauty and clarity amid the maelstrom” – Pitchfork

“Meditative moments of almost spiritual intensity shifting into caustic tumult” – The Wire

“This is a deeply personal record. But the magic of A Requiem is in the way Trappes carries us with her - out of the darkness and into the light” – Bandcamp Daily

“Beautifully harrowing music with little regard for the rule book” – Prog

“Spellbinding fifth album… a shadow work laced with black-veiled hope” - Line OF Best Fit

“…a deconstructed Björk meets Diamanda Galás on Nico's Desertshore is a glib but effective triangulation” - Uncut

“It’s a deeply personal exploration that somehow also touches a raw nerve of universal emotion, in a way that few artists possess the power to do” – Electronic Sound

“An unflinching exploration of darkness” - Vinyl Factory

“It's sacred music that exists in its own diocese, tracing an outline of recognisable hymns but emphasising the negative space” - Boomkat

“…engulfing sombre atmosphere” - Crack

“Trappes has a strong sense of dichotomy, that every aural high has a low, the smooth always has the rough, the light is brought down by the heavy” – The Quietus

Katie Kim

Katie Kim (Katie Sullivan) has been writing and recording for over 15 years both solo and more recently as a member of acclaimed experimental folk quartet OXN.. Mood is central to the expansive musical landscape throughout her releases. Whether they be bedroom, field or studio recordings. Darkened corners, icy atmospheres and hypnotic knife edge soundscapes. Inhabiting a lynchian metaverse, Piano chords stretch to infinity, Cinematic in scope and tectonic in delivery, many have used her scores in documentaries, film and TV to help deliver their stories. Katie Kim has collaborated extensively with many artists over the years, throughout the genre spectrum and continues to scout the unexplored.