Penelope Trappes’s second album delivers beautifully unsettling art installation dream pop while exploring interior worlds and minimal industrial zones

Penelope Trappes’s debut solo record One appeared last year on Glasgow’s Optimo Music and dealt in dystopian lullabies inspired by This Mortal Coil and Scott Walker. The soundscapes of Two – her follow-up on Houndstooth – no longer centre around a sparse piano and the dystopian realities are reconfigured as dreams gone wrong. Trappes further explores the interiors with an expanded, claustrophobic sonic palette. Her mournful yet hopeful dream pop has been submerged in art installation room tones on Two; it’s a beautifully immersive experience.

If more pop music adopted the glacial pacing of “Connector” then the world would surely be a more interesting place. Trappes breathes meaning into every word and the music erupts in slow motion around her voice. “I follow you, I follow you down”, she says as the track pulls everything downwards, heightened emotions tumbling off into the void. Elsewhere, pieces such as “Kismet” and “Exodus” recall the sound design of Dean Hurley or the minimal industrial zones of Abul Mogard (who recently remixed Trappes).

There are certainly qualities that suggest Trappes would make a fitting collaborator for David Lynch. She goes back to the source with “Maeve”, which channels This Mortal Coil’s “Song to the Siren” (a long-term Lynch favourite) or rather demands to take that track’s place within Lost Highway. It’s sensual and foreboding, an offer of escape or a plunge over the precipice.

Think of David Lynch producing Julee Cruise or Chrysta Bell, but without the need for Lynch to actually produce. Because it is clear with Two that Penelope Trappes doesn’t need to dream anybody else’s dreams.

penelopetrappes.bandcamp.com

Stewart Gardiner
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