After her collaboration with David Holmes fronting the Free Association, a string of session singing for the likes of Marianne Faithful and Martina Topley-Bird and film work such as ‘Analyse That’, Petra Jean is now finally in her element. Citing influences such as William Blake, Elizabeth I, Josh T. Pearson, Cindy Sherman, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, My Brightest Diamond, Syd Barrett, William Turner, Led Zeppelin, The 13 Grandmothers, Matthew Barney, Siouxsie Sioux, Sound Healing, foraging and jam making, we’re in no doubt you’re in for an extraordinary treat.
“Notes on: Death” is the second album in her conceptual ‘Notes:’ trilogy. It is a dark bewitching piece that follows on from her critically acclaimed debut album ‘Notes on: Love’, released in 2005. After that success Petra retreated from the lime light to the French countryside to write & develop her work.
On asking Petra Jean what she has been doing for the last 5 years, she replies “I have been learning about who I am and what I really want. I have been learning how to be a woman.”
Through ‘Notes on: Death’ Petra Jean takes on the mantle of the strong female, the Virgin Queen, the woman wedded to her art and her creative soul. Following in the footsteps of her great grandmother Francis Phillipson who chained herself to Durham town hall to win women’s right to vote, her grandmother Ivy Street who was a forewoman in the shell factory in the war, Petra feels there has to be other women out there projecting a positive image of woman. She expresses the desire to move away from the “over-sexualisation of female artists” (Richard Russell of XL Recordings) by the music industry, music with substance, integrity & heart being in the forefront of her thinking. So Elizabeth-like, Petra Jean takes to the stage.
Here in this stunning double LP, her recordings are divided into black and white sides. ‘Noir’ counter-balanced by ‘Blanc’. We experience the spiralling soundscapes of Dante’s inferno in “Underworld Tubeophany” set against the ascending scales of “Imaginary Gentle Place” in ‘Blanc’. Petra has an ability to transport us from the spine-chilling Kurt Weill-esque humour in ‘Noir’ to the beguiling angelic choirs of ‘Blanc’.
“She purrs like Billie Holiday back from the grave.” – NME
TRACK LISTING
Disc 1 ‘Noir’:
1. Underworld Tubeophany
2. City Of Lost Angels
3. Ire In June
4. My Love Resides In The Garden
5. You Asked For It
6. Kill You Drink You
7. 3 Men, 3 Mothers Dead
8. Pyrite
Disc 2 ‘Blanc’:
1. Imaginary Gentle Place
2. Victorian Worship Song
3. And Lilith Said Unto Adam
4. Dark Nights Of The Soul
5. All At Sea
6. Sissy’s Miracle
7. Ask The Gods To Pull Down The Sky
