Camden Town’s progressive multi-style experimentalists THE CHRONICLES OF MANIMAL AND SAMARA (TCOMAS) are back with their third album, Origins, slated for release on November 1, 2024.
The duo, formed in 2020, consists of Daphne Ang (vocals, piano, keyboard) and Andrea Papi (vocals, guitar, bass, drum programming). Hailing from Singapore and Italy respectively, Daphne and Andrea channel a mix of heavy rock, electronica, and poetry, pushing the boundaries of genre with each release. Origins follows their 2022 album Trust No Leaders and their 2020 debut Full Spectrum, both lauded for their unorthodox blend of music and poetry.
The first taste of Origins came earlier this year with Mysterium Tremendum, a fusion of death metal, classical music, and poetry accompanied by an animated video. The track dives into the duality of the numinous, embracing the awe and terror of existence, with Andrea revealing that one riff dates back to his teenage years, rediscovered and finally brought to life here.
“Origins will be our third album in four years. This album is more personal and written with the heart that has remained with us. Death, loss, addiction, real friendships, and toxic relationships – these personal experiences have stirred us to write the album’s songs. You can expect many unexpected twists and turns in the album – this is the chaos and unpredictability of life.” – says the band.
TCOMAS, formed in early 2020 when Daphne Ang and Andrea Papi crossed paths in London. Daphne, originally from Singapore, and Andrea, from Tuscany, Italy, brought their different backgrounds and life stories together, mirroring the eclectic nature of the music they produce. “Our music covers different genres, sometimes within a single track. The structures of our songs are usually unconventional,” they share, revealing the layered complexity that defines their work.
From the start, TCOMAS committed to a fully DIY approach—everything from their music, videos, and visuals to their writings is self-made. Each single’s artwork is a personal creation, painted by Daphne and Andrea. The album cover for Origins specifically features a series of paintings from early 2020, titled “Origins,” marking the genesis of their creative journey. “Our music is the reflection of our artworks, and vice versa,” they note, emphasizing the interplay between their visual and musical expressions.
As they prepare for a short hiatus to recharge, they express their gratitude to fans: “Thanks for following us on our journey. Now we will need some time to rest, recuperate and rejuvenate. See you soon—unless a big asteroid collides with our planet, or if humanity falls to a hostile AI takeover—whichever comes first.”
Track 1: Feed the Beast
“Addiction/Recovery”
Daphne: When we lose ourselves to addiction, we become slave to a beast that demands to be constantly fed.
What grows inside is a host of unimaginable horrors. For the video, we wanted to show the inner turmoil of a person who has lost all control to addiction.
The subjective experience of mental anguish is hard to articulate and express. So we decided to use AI as a conceptual tool by playing around with weird and obscure generative text prompts to get radical and disturbing results.
The imagery generated really scared the shit out of us. Some of the scenes mutate frame by frame, so we encourage you to hit the pause button throughout the video.
Track 2: Bite the Bullet (featuring Mr Meuri)
“Disillusion of the modern sycophant”
Andrea: I recorded this track around 6 years ago, which was when I got to know Mr. Meuri. We met at work and we both shared the same passion for music. We went to gigs together and we wanted to somehow musically collaborate. He made me listen to some hip-hop music that I didn’t even know existed. This consequently inspired this song. In 2024, we had an impromptu jamming session with Mr Meuri who freestyled the vocals with some lyrics that Daphne wrote.
Daphne: Working with Mr. Meuri really inspired me to finally try to rap. It was something I’ve always wanted to try but never had the chance to. Working with Mr Meuri on this great was such a great experience as it pushed me out of my comfort zone to explore a new type of expression.
Track 3: Waves
“Suicide”
Andrea: I want the listener to create their own meaning when listening to each track. I will remember “Waves” as the story of someone who has nothing left to live for. It finds, in death metal, a powerful new friend which gives him/her a reason to continue fighting through difficult times.
Daphne: The song is about someone who is contemplating suicide. It expresses the agony of having to hide the sufferings of the mind. But most importantly, it is also about having a friend to haul you out of stormy waters. For the lyrics, I drew alot of inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s final piece of writing – her suicide note. It affected me profoundly. While it was deeply haunting, it was also the expression of love and affection of the deepest kind.
The first part of the video is by me. I wanted to recreate how it must have felt like to be a character in Virginia Woolf’s novel ‘The Waves’. The second part of the video is by Andrea. He’s an avid surfer, so it’s his ode to the majestic imagery of ocean’s life.
Track 4: Per Astra
“Grief”
Daphne: I lost someone very dear to me recently. In my darkest moments of grief, I sought solace in my piano and wrote “Per Astra”. This is a song about yearning to be reunified with someone who is no longer around.
A person doesn’t disappear just because they died. Their essence lingers in every place they once graced. Like a droplet of water, they permeate the oceans, greenery, trees, and blossoms. They continue to walk among us, in every corner of the earth, and through the boundless universe we share, we will remain forever connected and intertwined. This is the inspiration behind the song and video.
The space scenes you see in the video are public domain images from NASA. The most mind-boggling image is the ultra deep fields (UDF) showing fields of galaxies stretching across half the observable universe in both space and time. Today, exciting scientific advances provide new insights into this cosmological mystery of our origins. Reading “A Universe From Nothing” by Lawrence M. Krauss, we found out that every atom in our body was once inside a star that exploded. So truly, our bodies are made of stardust, and in death, we will return to them.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, ESA/Hubble
Track 5: Mysterium Tremendum
“Dual Nature”
TCOMAS: This track was our first comeback after the release of our second album Trust No Leaders in July 2022. ‘Mysterium Tremendum’ explores the concept of “Mysterium tremendum et fascinans” which is the dual nature of the numinous – which is at once a mystery (mysterium) that is both terrifying (tremendum) and awe-inspiring – before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated (fascinans). We composed and arranged our first classical orchestral section on this track. It was a challenge – Daphne recorded the individual instruments in the string, woodwind, brass, and percussion sections, and Andrea got the orchestral effects right in the production stage.
Andrea: There is a guitar riff on this track that I wrote when I was 14 years old. Somehow my brain unlocked something from the past that was hidden for many years. It’s great that it finally found a place to stay.
Daphne: For the music video, we wanted something set in Ancient Rome and Medieval Europe. It tells the story of a slave-born gladiator who fought and gained freedom for the people through his own death. This was the first time I experimented with AI text prompts for videos. It really helped us to create scenes that were otherwise impossible to create with our budget.
Track 6: It goes
The oldest ritual: “Working all our lives for something that will never be ours”
Andrea: My colleagues at my previous job bought me a classical guitar for my birthday, such great guys, right!?! I wanted to make this present at work as a way of saying thanks to friends.
In every work enviroment we’ll find some people who do their job and others who try to avoid it at all cost. In any case, always, in the end, someone has to do it.
Fun fact: this guitar can’t keep the standard tuning so I’ve had to find another way around it and it worked just the way it goes.
