penelope trappes: penelope redeux

After the release of her sublime sophomore solo album Penelope Two, Penelope Trappes and Houndstooth announce Penelope Redeux, an album of top-drawer reworks of tracks from Penelope Two which showcase the intrinsic brilliance of Penelope's composition and performances and her far-reaching and all-encompassing musical influences and significance. On Penelope Redeux, Penelope Two's themes of life and death and of hope and dismay are still prevalent, brought to the surface in a myriad of ways. Mogwai stretch "Burn On" into a scorching, warbling drone that flips the original somber subtlety for grandeur and in-your-face majesty. Factory Floor member Nik Colk Void offers up a wayward, statically charged reworking of "Nite Hive" which reimagines the track's solemn beauty as a heads-down roller. Throbbing Gristle's Cosey Fanni Tutti's dystopian, avant-garde and jazz tinged electronics are deployed alongside her signature cornet to flip "Carry Me." Félicia Atkinson's rework of "Burn On" digs for the skeletal awe by stripping away many of Penelope's multi-layered effects and pushing the bare vocals to the front with manipulated field recordings. Houndstooth mainstay Throwing Snow demonstrates his ineffable brilliance, delivering an elastic-yet-powerful subdued rework of "Farewell". Jófríður Ákadóttir aka JFDR injects nimble rhythms and guitar into piano ballad "Maeve." Hidden Orchestra member Poppy Ackroyd transposes "Kismet" onto the piano, adding eerie percussive embellishments. Savages producer Jonny Hostile takes "Farewell" and utilizes the space within to add more noise and energy. Sigur Ros' musical director Paul Corley, delivers a forlorn take on "Nite Hive," whilst Swedish techno duo Aasthma (Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik) "Connector" to an entirely different realm, adding rattling drum patterns and skidding synth leads which transform the sober original to a joyous dancefloor slayer. Trappes is a London-based, Australian-born vocalist; she spent 2016 writing and recording what would become her first solo album Penelope One  in a piano studio in East London. Composed of mostly percussion-less, reverb-heavy atmospherics with dystopian themes, the LP was released via Optimo Music. Penelope signed to Houndstooth in 2018 and released Penelope Two; the minimalist, ethereal album was built around field recordings, meditations, guitars, synth drones, piano and reverb, and deals with mortality, predestination and empathy.