Troth

Troth

An Unfinished Rose

Night School

Slowly yet firmly blooming into focus, An Unfinished Rose is the new album from Australian duo Troth. This is their first since relocating to Hobart, Tasmania and their introduction to Night School Records. With a detailed web of past releases on labels A Colourful Storm, Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox, Knekelhuis and Bowman’s own Altered States Tapes imprint, An Unfinished Rose is the group’s most realized and composed work thus far. While still drawing on the improvisatory and DIY practices that informed Troth’s beginnings, it points to a new incarnation of the duo’s music; an intentional language emerging from the fog of obfuscation and mists of uncertainty.Over these nine meditations on change, acceptance, renewal and rebirth, An Unfinished Rose finds Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman peeling back some of the roughhewn architecture that defined their earlier releases to reveal a masterful—if auto-didactic—use of space and melody. Composition and improvisation compliment and feed each other throughout, with locked-loop earworms providing the springboard for lines of clarinet or synth melody, and the negative space between chord clusters giving ample room for Besseny’s most confident vocal performances to date. Shaving off a little of the defining dissonance and tape compression of old reveals Troth’s music in radiant daylight, humbly accepting of its place in the world while yearning for better, more sympathetic modes of living. Leaning more heavily on acoustic instrumentation and post-production processes than previously, the result is a transcendent body of work infused with an almost zen-like presence.

Troth

Idle Easel EP

Digital Regress

"A new EP from Troth, following up their brilliant third album Forget The Curse released earlier this year. An EP of sorts, as these six wonderful tracks clocks in at over 31 minutes! A double one-disc EP? No matter what, Idle Easel sees the band in a transitional period, as the duo of Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman left Newcastle for Hobart, Tasmania during the recording sessions. The record has this heavy feeling of leaving something behind for something new, a feeling that is kind of boosted by the rather melancholic, autumnal presence that runs throughout Idle Easel. Blasting these songs in a currently very rainy Gothenburg in full, blown-out autumn mode certainly adds, but there's more to it than that. "'Wolkenträume' blends prominent Tassie location recordings with sparse keyboard melodies and angel-like singing—which after slowly coming down from an intense Ron Nagorcka period feels like the perfect bridge back to the grim, cold, northern reality. 'Autumnal Hymn' is one of those rather minimal, lovely piano songs courtesy of Amelia, with harmonies that could only be Troth. Placed halfway through the EP, the peculiar 'Kind Of Cure' almost comes like a palette cleanser from the uniform. Exquisite thickness, while not exactly jolly, a sort-of eccentric and lush take on folk music. 'Angel Not So Easy' has that hazy club-feel, coming from the same place as the title track on Forget The Curse and the IDDB 7" A-side, always maintaining that glorious DIY-edge. 'Sunflower' further explores the mixture of beats...

Troth

Small Movements In Radiance

Not Not Fun

The latest by deep listening duo Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman aka Troth exists in the outer reaches of open air ritual and crouched quietude, born of the seclusion and slanted sunlight of their garden-shrouded shed studio in Newcastle, Australia. True to its title, Small Movements In Radiance unfolds gently and luminously, hushed ceremonies of haze, harp, glockenspiel, tuned metal, and field recordings, variously inspired by “sublime bushwalks in the Blue Mountains,” sonic sleep aids, and the notion of “ambient music for children.”  There's a uniquely ageless, sacred feel to the album's five pieces, lulling but liminal, alluring resonances heard faintly from distant hillsides. Elements interweave across long, opaque arcs, then elusively re-isolate in stark tableaus of hiss and absence. Bowman cites a desire to resist “a world inhabited by far too many negative forces,” which these vulnerable but veiled environments softly do – carving out fragile terrain for escape, reflection, or renewal.