the golden filter: still // alone

Optimo Music present the second full-length from The Golden Filter, Still // Alone. After relocating to London and playing shows around Europe for a year and a half, self-imposed pariahs Penelope Trappes and Stephen Hindman delved into creating a two-sided existential opus by renting out old studio spaces around the UK and using mostly analog '80s instruments, machines, and effects. An album about being in love with pure solitude, when Still // Alone is separated into two distinct sides, record one, Still, is a hypnotic meditation for the nightclub. Wavy patterns of sound and light bounce off of Penelope's literary vocal bursts, layered over the ominous deep synths and arpeggiators, held together only by a strict 4/4 beat - the rhythm, ironically forcing the body to move, however internally focused and mindful, still. Record two, Alone, takes the club offline and into the fringes of raw, odd pop. Ever-prominent drum machine beats rule, while love and loss permeate the four atmospheric goth songs. Music for dancing alone. "Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern. . . the whole world is a work of art . . . there is no Shakespeare . . . no Beethoven . . . no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself." --Virginia Woolf