Blue Vow is the experimental noise project of Cape Town-based visual artist and songwriter Chelsea Ann Peter. Her music is at once mystifying yet playful, with a kind of slow-burning ambience and droning synth explorations that culminate in angst-fuelled, existential alt-rock.
With additional tinges of folk, psych and low-fi, Blue Vow is as daring as she is contemplative; measured. All of her work thus far feels meticulously well-crafted, and all the thought and process that goes into conceiving of such a project is certainly not lost on listeners. In fact, it’s what makes Blue Vow so unique.
“The demos have always been written in solitude,” Peter tells me. “It always begins with a feeling, one that seems impossible to process by any other means. Then I attempt to find a key or a note (often in the form of a drone) that pulls the feeling outside of myself.”
“It’s an intuitive collaging of past, present and future through sounds, and I have no idea what the result is going to be,” she continues. “When an idea blooms and something lights up inside of me, the call to bow to my instinctual feeling and follow it through is unwavering. Time stops and nothing else exists, except the energy and my body as a conduit for art. It’s such a humbling and stunning alchemy.”
Her debut album Sunfall – released back in 2022 – is awash with an enveloping musical glow that slowly morphs into an ever-expanding soundscape. And since then Peter has only been growing her distinct artistry.
Her sophomore record Death Of A Big Black Dog is set for release in November this year, and it promises to be just as compelling. With pre-released singles like “The Weather Had Its Way” and “Oistrophaneia” Blue Vow delivers a haunting and conceptual sound, playing with themes of light and dark, moving life forces and a feeling of quiet discontentment.
The aesthetic components of Peter’s work are equally vivid, and equally necessary. In many ways they are not just an extension of her tracks, but a completion of them. Her music is so alive with visceral imagery that it absolutely needs a visual counterpart.
“Ever since I can remember, creating and playing visually has been something I have always felt connected to. I both needed and nurtured it growing up, more so than music. Perhaps it felt more accessible to me or something,” says Peter.
“I see a release as an entire body of work, therefore every limb is important to me,” she continues. “I also don’t want to limit my creative exploration; I’d like to stretch it as far as possible and go beyond.”
On the one side, her sound is strongly reminiscent of artists like Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys, Dangerfields, Holograph and Yndian Mynah. It’s so brilliant to see how our scene continues to thrive, as new artists push boundaries and experiment in ways that, in my opinion, make Cape Town one of the world’s most progressive and relevant cultural centres for psych-rock right now – a movement that Blue Vow is certainly helping to shape.
On the other side, there’s a kind of crooning nature to her lyrics that recalls the likes of Joanna Gruesome, Nick Cave and Cate Le Bon, only less pop and more noise.
“Come to think of it, I didn’t have musical inspirations growing up,” says Peter. “All I knew was what pop culture was selling me, which I wouldn’t call inspiring.”
“I knew I wanted to make music though, and that feeling of real, raw inspiration only came much later,” she continues. “It was awoken by Patti Smith, Tom Waits, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Kathleen Hannah, Kim Gordon and David Lynch, to name a few. Since then I’ve collected more faces and names – it’s an ever-weaving braid.”
The forthcoming Death Of A Big Black Dog will be a journey of profound introspection; a kind of elegy for the old self, as Peter puts it. “The future for Blue Vow is hugely exciting and completely new,” she tells me.
“Now that we have a beautiful band comprising of Joy Markus, Stephan Erasmus, Damon Miles and Cam Lofstrand, the possibilities for what Blue Vow could become feel infinite. The intention is for Blue Vow to be a fully collaborative entity rather than what began as a solo project,” she says.
The project was in fact born from an abstraction of the colour blue. “Yves Klein got it right when he said, ‘Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions’,” Peter tells me.
“In 2021 I was in an Uber with my mom heading to the airport in Joburg to get on a flight back home to Cape Town,” she continues. “I was lost in a daydream, digging up words from the archive of my mind. I gazed at the car’s radio display screen and saw the word ‘Vow’. I put the two words together and something clicked into place. It then came to my awareness that the backlight of the radio display screen was also blue.”
“The unknown is a breath of fresh air and something I am very much looking forward to exploring” ends Peter. I have no doubt that this project will continue to evolve in unpredictable and exciting ways. Blue Vow is already so many things, and the possibilities are endless.
A search for meaning in the abstract, Peter proves that songwriting is not just something we do. It’s a way of being; an existence. And just like life, it’s always changing.
Cover photo courtesy of Nina Du Plessis.
