PRESS
BIO
Origin: Newcastle
Genre: Synth Pop, Electronic, Folk, Choral
Years Active: 2015 - Present
Label: Independent, Domino Records, Drag City
Official Websites: dawnbothwell.com
PRESS QUOTES
PENTECOSTAL PARTY
Pentecostal Party is ethereal and euphoric with repetition and refrains. It blends entrancing music and surreal pop lyrics with both melodic and spoken word. Semi structured improvised performances are enlivened with synthesisers, drum machines, effects, and vocals, creating an immersive sound that collugates with the environment of listening
(NARC Magazine News, September 22nd, 2015) Pentecostal Party is the electronic project of Dawn Bothwell. Mixing sedate, down-tempo beats with layered synths, Bothwell creates mesmerising soundscapes that build up and immerse the listener in a world of cacophonous sound. Aided by solo voice – which she loops creating more depth and human connection – Pentecostal Party’s songs will hypnotise into a trance of lo- electronica.
(Tom Hollingworth, NARC Magazine, 1April, 2016) Dawn Bothwell’s project Pentecostal Party is born of her interest “in the type of euphoric high you experience in groups of people worshiping together: an experience that is both solitary and collective.” A creeping pulse established with a prominent hi-hat and light analogue synth on the surface, whilst the ear is more and more drawn to what lurks in the depths, the yearning and relentless army of voices plotting beneath. Music can be loved for an infinite amount of reasons, but the behavior that I find particularly special about Pentecostal Party’s music is the way it unlocks depths through deceptively simple, minimalist structure. Small synth lines and repeated phrases map the contours of her songs, but as a listener you are compelled to imagine the terrain. Her music’s majesty reveals itself like a magic-eye picture, or faces forming in tree bark.
HEN OGLEDD
(Alex Nivan, The Face, 2023) “hallucinatory discord with excavations of the medieval history of Northumbria…. this psychedelic approach offers a way of transcending portrayals of northern subjects as ‘humble worker bees’ ”
(Hen Ogledd ‘Free Humans’ Album Review in Loud And Quiet, Dominic Haley, 20 sep 2020, 9/10) Simply put, if Free Humans was a film, then it’d be The Goonies directed by Werner Herzog. It’s a surreal, heartwarming adventure through the hedges and hedgerows of Britain’s musical fringes – an absolute masterpiece.
Hen Ogledd ‘Songs about sewage and space travel? It's prog-folk band Hen Ogledd in The Guardian, Joel White, 25 Sept 2020 Influences on the album range from Abba and Billie Eilish to 12th-century composer Hildegard von Bingen, while the lyrics keep pace with such weirdness. As Bothwell jokes: “We decided to pick the most popular themes, typical stuff like sewers and the surfaces of other planets.” Something about the spirit and shared connection of the band give the whirling parts a gloriously odd cohesion. A key part of this is the distinctive singing of all four members, delivered in various Scottish, Welsh and northern English accents – after all, Hen Ogledd is Welsh for the Old North – along with swathes of vocoder. Many of the album’s best hooks came from exploring the limits of traditional vocal range, as Dawson explains: “It’s that area where you’re on the fringes of what you can actually do, where you’re absolutely out in the wilderness. It’s a really nice place to operate.”