Chelsea Wolfe * Techtonic Movement * Dan K

With music that's a raw strain of electric folk, tinged with black metal and deep blues, Chelsea Wolfe somehow never wallows in despair. The California native embodies both light and dark, and with her latest full-length, last year's Aποκάλυψις (pronounced "Apokalypsis"), she effectively takes a warm blanket and wraps it around the human experience in an uplifting, encouraging manner. Her voice, warm and lingering, yet haunting in its own way, acknowledges life's obscure and melancholy moments, and the unlikely truths and beauty they can reveal. She cites influences encompassing more than music (Nick Cave and Selda Bagcan) and the wild and woodsy part of California from which she hails, but also credits film directors including Ingmar Bergman, John Waters, and the dramatic flair of Antony Hegarty for informing her style.

Chelsea Wolfe began sneaking into her father's home studio at age 9 to record both warped keyboard covers and her own original tunes, but it wasn't until much later that she gained the confidence to share her work or considered making music for others to hear. Then in 2009, a three-month international stint with a group of nomadic performing artists, playing such varied spaces as cathedrals, basements, and abandoned nuclear factories, she returned home with new vision and recorded two albums worth of material back-to-back. In 2010, she turned those recordings into her debut, The Grime & The Glow, which as been described simultaneously as healing, harrowing, enchanting, and narcotic. She then relocated to Los Angeles to record Aποκάλυψις, this time employing her live band in the studio.