In a landscape where post-rock is very male and instrumentally dominated, Spirit Photographs responds and challenges the genre by being vocally and emotionally driven. The EP is a post-rock/drone folk concept album about grief. Each of the five songs represents one of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ stages: denial (“June”), anger (“Amends”), bargaining (“Raven’s Song”), depression (“Solitude”, a Black Sabbath cover from the seminal Master of Reality), and acceptance (“The Throne”). Through this model, I explore processing the personal turmoil of my mental health disability in an era of collective trauma. The title is inspired by spirit photography, a spiritualist practice that was popular after the Spanish Flu. The medium claimed to show spirits and ghosts of dead family members behind the portrait’s subject. Spirit Photographs blends this concept with the roaring twenties, a century later.

Despite its melancholic subject matter, the album is about strength. It is an exercise in naming ghosts in order to vanquish them. Its purpose is to capture a triumphant portrait of grief with the intended outcome of demonstrating metamorphosis through acceptance of struggle, turning the narrative of suffering upside down.

Spirit Photographd

The Throne

Kiki

Draw The Line Mix Radio Show 26-11-2019

Vocally driven post rock drone folk textures that weave through gigantic feelings.

The Throne

Gillian Stone

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