Paper Dollhouse

Event information

A night of folk-y/ambient-y/electronica-y live music at Power Lunches Arts Café in Dalston, to celebrate the release of Lost Harbours debut album 'Hymns and Ghosts'

Paper Dollhouse is the work of Astrud Steehouder and Nina Bosnic; dark minimal gothic folk which comprises haunting vocals, guitar, visuals and electronic atmospherics.

Inspired by early 60s electronic pioneers Delia Derbyshire and Eliane Radigue, 1988 cult horror film Paperhouse, bleak British television soundtracks, minimal dark electronica, Arthur Russell and Diamanda Galas, the music combines simple folk songs with environmental and electronic textural sounds to create a pared down, beautiful experience.

Originating as a solo project, a debut LP entitled "A Box Painted Black" was released on the Bird/ Finders Keepers label in December 2011. Recorded in the kitchen and garden of Steehouder's London home, often first takes, the songs are a deep reflection of the environment in which they were written.

Dense in simplicity and thick with silence the songs are restrained, intense, lingering and decorated with white noise. There is a raw completeness to the work, the body of which is clearly a deep and evolving spectrum.

Lost Harbours: Is the work of Southend based Richard Thompson and Emma Reed. They have released several tapes and cdrs over the last few years, but Hymns and Ghosts marks the release of their first full length album. Their music is a mix of both ancient folk tradition with modern experimental sounds, with a sound influenced as much by Sunn o))) as it is by Nick Drake. A "present day avant-garde blend of post modern orchestration and Gregorian chant".

Petrels: Petrels is London-based musician Oliver Barrett (Bleeding Heart Narrative/Grapefruits). Debut album 'Haeligewielle' was released on Tartaruga Records in 2011 and re-issued by Denovali Records in early 2012; combining bowed strings, discarded electronics, sporadic percussion and occasional vocals; "frighteningly claustrophobic but exultant in a beautifully understated way... monstrous arvo part-isms and Peter Wright destructo-drones. and with similar tropes can come across like Richard Skelton on steroids." (cowsarejustfood). Petrels has played with Nadja, Trouble Books, Geoff Mullen, The Samuel Jackson Five, John Chantler, and Ronin amongst others, and 'Haeligewielle' was nominated for The Uranus prize in 2011.