Czech-born Berlin-based vocalist and visual artist Petra Hermanova
started out in Brno as a vocalist and guitarist in the duo Fiordmoss
with keyboardist Roman Prikryl.
Their six-song EP Gliese (2000) is a noise version of synth-pop, notably the
glitchy folktronica of Cold Night and Miss Tate.
Augmented by guitarist Jan Boro,
they released the
five-song EP Ink Bitten (2012) that contains
Paris Versus Sarajevo, a spaced-out and almost psychedelic litany sung
in a Bjork-ian tone.
They added drummer Jon-Eirik Boska for the album
The electronic soundscape is the real protagonist of Eight Bones
and of Sheer Soul, the highlights of
Kingdom Come (2017), while
voice and drums dominate the threatening Madstone and Hermatova
pens the elegy Gaslight almost a-cappella.
Hermanova also collaborated with
Norwegian composer and percussionist Jon Eirik Boska
(aka Hydropsyche), for example on the wordless electronic
Ourobora Mass (2020), originally a sound installation of 2018
that simulates a Catholic mass and that was created by remixing and
expanding leftovers from Kingdom Come.
She released two singles Lacrimosa (2020) and the seven-minute Liquid of the Eye (2020).
Petra Hermanova then picked up the autoharp and recorded the double-LP
In Death’s Eyes (Unguarded, 2023), scored for
autoharp, pipe organ, voice and choir.
The organ was played by Denny Wilke in a German cathedral.
After the delicate and folkish overture Black Glass,
she intones the ten-minute elegy Two Deaths, whose second half is an organ solo. Her singing falls between
convent chants,
an operatic version of Nico
and a cauterized version of Diamanda Galas.
The massive autoharp and voice drones of the nine-minute Perforatum
are counterbalanced by the 15-minute Aurochs' Lament,
pastoral and lyrical sonata
which grows into an
electronic wall of noise, as if a Celtic folksinger transformed into
Gordon Mumma.
Elsewhere she sounds like a medieval troubadour.
Her best vocal games appear in I Am the Lung, accompanied again by the pipe organ.
