The »bloody countess« Elizabeth Báthory is one of the most notorious characters in modern music. This is mostly thanks to First-Wave Black Metal and its fascination with the abject. At the beginning of the 17th century, Báthory supposedly tortured and killed over 80 girls in Vienna and Slovakia. Only to, afterwards, bath in their blood – an image that has captured the imaginations of countless male metalheads. Venom dedicated a hymn to the countess, Bathory named themselves after her. Since then, the history of dark music has been awash with psych-sexual allusions of the figure. In contrast, the unagitated depiction of electro-acoustic composer Claire Rousay feels refreshingly somber.
»The Bloody Lady« is a warm Ambient album, full of melancholic piano lines and bird songs. Carefully, Rousay weaves in field-recordings of the surroundings of Bathory’s castle in the Carpathian Mountains. It’s her most conventional, but perhaps also her most concise LP as of now. The arrangements are simpler than on, say, »Everything Perfect Is Already Here«, while also lacking the ambitioned Pop-transformations of »sentiment«. Perhaps, this comes as no surprise. For »The Bloody Lady« is a soundtrack to a re-issue of an eponymous Slovak animated movie from 1981. I was conceived as a backing of minimal, dreamy images. Yet, it stands for itself as a monument to tenderness in the face of human abysses. A late-year highlight.
The Bloody Lady
