Princess Century - s u r r e n d e r (2021)

s u r r e n d e r, the upcoming third full-length record from Princess Century AKA Canadian musician and producer Maya Postepski (Austra, TR/ST, Peaches), is a work committed to submersion rather than submission. In this instance, the titular word refers not to a white flag, but a surrendering of the self to everything around it.
Across the 12 tracks on s u r r e n d e r, which was written between eastern Estonia, Morocco, and Berlin, and recorded at Berlin’s Riverside Studios, Postepski navigates a zero-gravity abyss of pure, unbridled emotion: floating past scraps of former lives, rummaging through sparks of joy and pleasure alongside mires of pain and loneliness, reanimating heartbreak and survival via drums, synths, and thoughtfully-sung words. It’s rich and visceral, a ritual of healing via dance and sound, of finding oneself in a careful arrangement of frequencies.
Postepski suggests that to fully feel hurt and darkness isn’t just inevitable but in fact essential for us to be able to thrive. Armed with that conviction, she presents a record which orchestrates an intimate, danceable soundtrack to the infamous penultimate lines from Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, Go To The Limits Of Your Longing. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.