Properly conveying grief in music requires just the right blend of delicacy and heaviness. Fortunately, that kind of chemistry is second nature to The Chronicles of Manimal and Samara, the incredibly intuitive musical duo who cast the perfect amount of shade on the focus track of their new Origins album, “Per Astra.”
Laying out its message at a slowed-down pace that’s appropriately dirge-like yet never deflating, the song finds its narrator yearning to be reunited with a lost loved one, no matter how deep a void she might have to embrace to do it.
A synthesizer riff that sounds plucked straight from an early-’80s John Carpenter movie and intermittent, old-school rhythm-box flourishes provide diverting period embellishments to this heart-rending ballad, supporting stately piano arpeggios and emotive vocals both sung and spoken. The seamlessness of the overall sound is a testament to the working methodology of partners Daphne Ang and Andrea Papi, each of whom contributes vocals, music and lyrics to the TCOMAS cause. On the instrumental front, the division of labor traditionally sees Ang handling piano and keyboards, while Papi plays electric guitar and bass, programs the drum tracks and produces all their material.
Recorded at their home studio in Camden Town, London UK, “Per Astra” heralds the arrival of TCOMAS’ new album, Origins, a six-song musing on letting go. Getting the most out of that theme meant working through two distinctly different types of loss: Ang had weathered the passing of someone extremely close to her, whereas Papi had watched as the temporary “renovation” of the firm where he had been working turned into a permanent shutdown. It all qualifies as grief, as a therapist would say; luckily for us, it also makes for great music.
“Per Astra” provides a gently elegiac counterpoint to some of the other tracks that dropped in advance of the album proper. “Mysterium Tremendum” blended death metal, classical music and poetry; “Feed the Beast” used its progressive rock/metal framework to explore the theme of addiction and recovery (leading to inclusion in several editorial playlists on Apple Music and Amazon Music); and “Bite the Bullet” was a hip-hop/metal hybrid that featured UK-based Italian rapper Mr Meuri.
Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/album/7vrgnxHwdp83XygLhBe2yh?si=57Z36zYiR4aIaH59-LUtuw
With those prior releases joining “Per Astra” on Origins, the Singapore-born Ang and the Italian Papi now have three albums of cutting-edge, boundary-challenging material under their belt—an impressive showing indeed, considering that they hooked up in London just under five years ago. Their debut, Full Spectrum, introduced listeners to their eclectic brew of heavy rock, electronic sounds and poetry performance, landing spotlight track “Love in the Time of Pestilence” on the Spotify playlists for Alternative Metal and Progressive Metal. Follow-up Trust No Leaders traced the history of metal and its various sub-genres, but in a highly unconventional way that made room for non-Western musical influences and lyrics inspired by Jungian psychology.
Art-forward to be sure, but you’d expect no less from a pair who display abundant parallel talents as visualists. TCOMAS brainstorm and produce their own music videos, which have been screened at numerous prestigious film festivals around the world, receiving 66 official selections and nominations to date. Sites of past triumphs have included the Tokyo International Short Film Festival, the Tsiolkovsky International Space Film Festival and the Ecologico International Film Festival. Ang and Papi also contributed the artwork that adorns the sleeve to Origins, drawing on a background as a painting team that even predates their musical partnership.
Whatever it takes to get their point across, this immensely talented and simpatico duo can do. And on Origins, their job is to walk us all through the valley of the shadow and bring us out the other side feeling renewed and reborn.
“This album is deeply personal and written from the heart,” they declare. “We dedicate it to the people who are still here, and to those we have lost. You’ll find many unexpected twists and turns throughout the album. Such is the chaos and unpredictability of life.”