Colourpicker: Vinyl 10″ EP Trout

Liverpool-based Trout release their debut EP Colourpicker on Chess Club Records. 

Following the sunny, jangly ‘Garden’, ‘In My Room’ leans back into the grungier side of Trout’s repertoire, a track which plays on the fine line between romantic and unsettling in its depiction of an all-consuming adoration. This manifests itself in refrains like ‘Be the places I ignore / The hairs on my bed / Be the mould growing up my door’, and Trout explains; “‘’in my room’ is about completely adoring someone. It’s meant to be sweet and endearing but also a little creepy at the same time. I leant into the idea of being so obsessed with someone that you want them to be everywhere and everything, good and bad. It’s a satirical song but also a love song”

Trout is the creative alias of 23 year old Cesca – who spent their childhood years growing up in Copenhagen, born to an Iranian father and British mother. Their early musical memories are of sibling rivalries played out to the soundtracks of the Gipsy Kings and a worn out Suzanne Vega tape which emboldened their early love of songwriting. On turning nine however, they found themselves suddenly uprooted, relocating with their family to a country they’d never even heard of – Wales. The teething problems which hallmarked such a shift in Trout’s psychogeography were compounded further by the prospect of learning a third language. Arriving in a “particularly Welsh part of Wales,” they had to quickly learn the Welsh language – an ability Trout now carries proudly. With their adolescence framed by green hills in the East and the Irish Sea to the West, growing up in rural Wales nurtured Trout’s reverence for nature and water, an inextricable part of their identity which has manifested in their passion for sustainability, and is reflected back in their artist moniker. 

Despite favouring the freedom of art class over the more rigid music syllabus at high school, after graduating Trout headed for the border, relocating to Liverpool to study music at LIPA. 

Whilst Trout reflects that it was Liverpool city itself and the community they found there which had the most significant impact on the course of their creativity, they credit their education with developing their interest in music production. Having previously dismissed this side of things as a dry, technical process, Trout credits a particular professor with shifting their perceptions to the craft – encouraging them to approach it as a style and creative outlet of its own. After mastering basic production software, Trout quickly realised that they were suited to the medium in a surprising way – having discovered several years earlier that their hyper-visual and aural response to music wasn’t the norm (and was in fact synesthesia). Trout began to employ this as their “sixth sense” relying on their instinct to understand where their songs needed embellishment or reigning in, and the Colourpicker EP is named in honour of this.  

This holistic approach to their craft is rarified on Colourpicker, which Trout elucidates as a collection of which reflect the “to-and fro-ing of many thoughts I was having at the time.” Tracks like ‘words’ and ‘bugs’ capture the feeling of being trapped in a state of unwilling inertia, the latter envying the productivity of the insects outside their bedroom. ‘garden’ builds on this theme, unpacking the temptation for codependency, whilst ‘gutter’ and ‘sad sad sad sad sad’ are written “from a stronger place,” namely the bittersweet defiance of having your emotions and experiences doubted by someone close to you. Across the EP’s six tracks, it becomes abundantly lucid that Trout is the kind of artist with the innate power to make you feel like you’re living their highs and lows in real time. Their influences are therefore unsurprising, but by no means insignificant – with Trout nodding specifically to the poetic songwriting genius of Adrianne Lenker, the layered vocals of Warpaint, and Sorry’s seamless blend of post-punk with idiosyncratic electronic flourishes. Carrying an undeniable charm and arriving in earnest, Colourpicker is set to be a striking first declaration from Trout, promising plenty more to come from this compelling new talent. 

TRACKLISTING
01. gutter
02. in my room
03. sad sad sad sad sad
04. words
05. garden
06. bugs