Wave music producer hybrid Sophie Du Palais shares debut LP

One of the brightest emerging talents from the contemporary Dutch electronic underground is German ‘fetish-inclined’ vocalist & Amsterdam-based performer Sophie du Palais (Pinkman, Dekmantel Recordings), also known as Vrouwe Fataal.

‘Endurance Of Pain Is The Power Of Being’ is the debut solo LP by Sophie Du Palais, following highly rated collaborative appearances on Pinkman Records and Dekmantel Recordings alongside Dutch DJ, producer & close collaborator Job Veerman aka Identified Patient.

Across six tracks of sinister industrial wave music, Du Palais unravels a potent signature, driven by fierce, imperious Anglo-Germanic vocals and eclectic, dissonant sounds. Connecting techno, EBM, acid and electro with vestiges of dub and experimental electronics, on ‘Endurance of Pain…’ Du Palais conjures an abrasive, intoxicating depiction of lust, hedonism, technological obsession and millennial alienation.

With the cruising techno pop menace of ‘Slow Steady Cum’, Du Palais introduces a nocturnal underworld. The sense of a dark descent is intensified by the mania and murk of ‘Glazed Disco Ball’ – a suspenseful dose of guttural low end, scowling Sprechgesang, and crude drum machine clatter; if Gudrun Gut fronted Suicide. ‘Boys Tears’ elaborates on the dread and the sleaze with a horror show of gurgling synthesis, drubbing percussion and dissolute enunciations, halfway between John Carpenter and Unit Moebius.

From there ‘Up To No Good’ brings proceedings into a severe form of heat and frenzy, outlaying an exchange of raw jackhammer rhythms and vociferous punk chants that recalls Liaisons Dangereuses’ timeless underground classic ‘Los Niños del Parque’ if remade for 2021. ‘Smash The Mirror’ announces itself with a furtive creep, melding scintillating dub recurrence with freakish machine funk before Du Palais concludes the set with the sardonic electro-clash anthemics of ‘2001’, a provocative exploration of self, communication, and compulsion in the digital era. Miss Kitten meets Dopplereffekt for a technoid bonfire of the vanities.

‘Endurance of Pain…’ finds Sophie Du Palais seizing an uncompromising sense of style and intensity, a rising new artist navigating a merciless, pleasure-seeking existence, from club to bedroom to screen, facing it all down with a cold glare, ready to light the fuse.