Blue Vow transmutes pain into something potent and empowering on single “Some Kind Of Suicide”

Under the guise of Blue Vow, Chelsea Ann Peter makes music that spans slow-burning ambience to more violent, noise-driven entities - and, on her latest single, the Cape Town-based artist is transmuting pain into something potent and empowering.

Titled “Some Kind Of Suicide” and releasing through The Good Times Co, the latest Blue Vow single emerged when Peters was “roaming the streets of Berlin in pursuit of satisfying a good cup of coffee and a sandwich”. 
“The words “some kind of suicide” emerged in my thoughts. Uncertain of the significance of those four words but drawn to them, I wrote them down. Months later back home in Cape Town, while soaking in the history of the Salem Witch Trials and engrossed in the lore surrounding ancient Greek deities (namely Artemis and Hekate), I found myself reflecting on personal experiences, as well as disturbing headlines of violence against woman-identifying bodies. Deeply affected by what was moving within me, I wove a song beginning with a feeling, after which emerged a drone, a synth and then came a vision. Welling up from a pool of injustice, those four words that revealed themselves months ago had settled in their place.”

Peters shares that “Some Kind of Suicide” celebrates the lives, and grieves the loss, of woman-identifying bodies whose light and being was (and continues to be) extinguished by the hands of men. Though never forgetting, the song refuses to dwell in victimhood, choosing instead to transmute that pain into something potent and empowering.

As Blue Vow, Peter plays with sound to exorcise her dissection of and attempt to comprehend inner and outer worlds. While moving through self-reflexive, existential doors, her debut album, Sunfall (2022), and her forthcoming album Death of a Big Black Dog, set to release in 2024, sink fully into the dark and the light, finding their pulse on the edge where the two forces meet. Dipping in and out of dream landscapes, storytelling, and memory, both bodies of work simultaneously destroy and breathe anew.

Presently morphing into a full band comprising Joy Markus, Damon Miles, Cam Lofstrand, and Stephan Erasmus, Blue Vow is re-imagining itself, slowly shedding skins and transitioning into something new.