Katherine Priddy - These Frightening Machines Katherine Priddy

Katherine Priddy's third album These Frightening Machines on March 6 via Cooking Vinyl. The new record follows Priddy’s highly acclaimed debut The Eternal Rocks Beneath and sophomore LP The Pendulum Swing which firmly established her as one of the most exciting artists on the contemporary British music scene.

Speaking about These Frightening Machines, Priddy shared: “If the first album was for building a foundation, and the second album was about reinforcing what I’d already begun, the third album felt to me like a chance to be bolder, push out and try something new.”

Produced by Rob Ellis (P J Harvey, Anna Calvi, Marianne Faithfull, Bat for Lashes) and recorded at The Glaucus House, Middle Farm Studios in rural Devon, These Frightening Machines was written
over the course of a year as Priddy made the transition from her 20s to her
30s. She consciously kept an open mind during the making of the album, focussed purely on being creative, and determined to let the songs find their own form.

“At its core,” added Priddy, “I think These Frightening Machines explores the ever shifting relationship I have
with my sense of self as a woman, my body and my place in the world as a 30
year old artist - but I’d like to think that whilst the songs are born from
personal experience, the feelings expressed are widely relatable.”

The most sonically varied of her career, the songs on Priddy’s new album span a full spectrum of emotions from anger and despair to hope, longing and lust, from reclaiming the voices of women silenced by history, to expressing solidarity and love, to confronting illness,
disconnection, the vulnerability and importance of relationships, and the
general ache of growing older and not always wiser. They explore what it means to keep going when things fall apart, to hold onto connections in a world that sometimes divides, and to figure out where we fit into the machines and systems we find ourselves a part of.

“I wanted to end this album on a question mark,” said Priddy “as whilst I’d have hoped to have it all figured out by the third album and my third decade, I’ve come to accept that perhaps part of being human is being a perpetual work in progress. Could this collection of songs be enough? If it strikes a match and casts a little light for anyone who has ever felt their body falter, their love waver, or time slip through their fingers, then that’s enough for me.”

Notable guests on These Frightening Machines include American singer/songwriter Torres who duets on “Madeleine”, and Richard Walters who duets on “I'm Always Willing”. Revered, alt folk multi-instrumentalist Ben Christophers (Natasha Khan, Guy Garvey and many more) features on most of the album’s tracks.