PRINCESS CHELSEA | ARTIST

Rising New Zealand musician PRINCESS CHELSEA (a.k.a. Chelsea Nikkel) is proud to announce her brand new album The Great Cybernetic Depression, which will be released in New Zealand via Flying Nun/Lil’ Chief on May 1st 2015.

Building upon the success of her 2011 debut Lil Golden Book, which spawned the internet sensation Cigarette Duet (which has racked up nearly twenty million hits on Youtube), the new album is a sparkling, glittering epic, weaving layers upon layers of synths to create a fantastical universe that is out of this world. Her background in classical music lends a darkly baroque flair to the sound, with the songs more like compositions than traditional synth pop, weaving unconventional song structures with very dense wall of synth arrangements to create a sound that has been described as retrofuturistic. With influences ranging from Kraftwerk to Tomita and Eurythmics part of the inspiration behind the album was to recreate the magic of childhood sci-fi moves like The Neverending Story, sounding like the future as she imagined it when she was ten.

In homage to the many great 70s synthesizer records that would have a concept or story behind them, Princess Chelseas new LP is themed around a made-up metaphorical world event‚ The Great Cybernetic Depression, which happens sometime in the future (about ten years from now). Depression can sometimes feel like the apocalypse to an individual and referencing this fictional event several times throughout the album, Chelsea channels her anxieties and sings about personal relationships over the past three years, weaving in an out of her narrative.