Trixie Whitley

Trixie Whitley has been time-traveling for years now. Looping through the wormholes that  bridge past trauma and present joy — dismantling and rebuilding her life through words and  music. “Lots of life has happened since I last put out music — endings and new beginnings — which is often not very comfortable,” she says. “But, through it all, I had music.”

The result is Folded Time, out TK date on Unday Records, a nine-song LP “about loss and  reframing,” she says. “From my relationships to politics, that has seeped throughout the work.  The last seven years have really been this reckoning with my own repressed thoughts, who I am  as a mother, and how that changes how I see the world.”

Whitley — yes, daughter of singer-songwriter Chris Whitley — has been a musician since birth,  basically. She was drumming at 10, DJing underground Berlin clubs at 11, and touring Europe as  a dancer in her teens. Growing up between New York and Belgium, she left school at 17 and  became a full-time musician, touring Daniel Lanois’ band Black Dub, and going solo in 2013.  Since then, she’s dropped three LPs and four EPs; collaborated with the likes of Thomas Bartlett  and Run The Jewels producer Little Shalimar; and created soundtracks for theater and film  director Wim Vandekeybus. Most recently, she released her Dragon of Everything EP in 2024, a  rumination “on all of the complexities of being a mother and finding my way in an industry that  doesn’t embrace motherhood at all,” she says.

Folded Time, then, is the next chapter — an exploration of motherhood, womanhood, girlhood,  and all the attendant joys and sorrow they entail. Whitley began work on the record at the Jet  Studio in Brussels in the summer of 2024, and continued to hone the tracks the following winter  in her apartment in Brooklyn and at the home studio of friend and collaborator Kid Koala (Eric  Yick Keung San) in Montreal.

“I didn’t really have a very specific map other than I had to listen to my body,” Whitley says.  And her body desperately needed drums. Whitley was behind the kit on this record, as well as  the bass, guitar, piano, and mic. To round out the louder-than-life vibe, she also brought in Cem  Misirlioglu (drums); Stuart Bogie (horns); and guest vocalists Mayteana Morales, Domenica, and  Katy Pinke.

The record kicks off equal parts delicate and dangerous with “Carry,” a kind of mystical  incantation that Whitley turns to now like a stress ball. “When your past life is haunting you and  you feel like total shit and joy seems far away, you need to find your place for hope,” she says.  “For me, that’s the drums. This song… it starts in the mud and ends in the sun.” And then there’s  the tribal, trippy breakup song, “Building Fences,” which, despite being “a simple little tune”  thrums with raw emotion. “It’s a little heartbreak tune, a little codependency,” Whitley says.

The moody “Fascinating and Fun” sees Whitley almost rapping over a bed of drums, horns, and  infectious beats. “That was very much an experiment,” she says. “That track is literally just me  engaging with that process in the studio from a very improvised kind of place — focusing only  on what was fascinating and fun. I have a really deep love for polyrhythm, and it was really fun  to explore the full palette.”

“Desire Is Movement” tip-toes in next like a cat slinking down a keyboard, sultry and sad. “It is very much about the dance between permanence and impermanence — that’s also a big  theme of this record,” Whitley says. And then there’s strummy, fierce “Innocent Criminal,” a  song about giving voice to the voiceless partially inspired by personal experience and the  political climate.“It’s about having a child who is the age that I was when I started performing  and when I also started experiencing a lot of shit that I am trying to protect her from now,”  Whitley says. “Also, it’s about who I am as a woman — a mother. Becoming the woman I  dreamed of becoming.”

“Taking My Body Back” continues in that vein, a true-blue anthem that Whitley wrote after Roe  v. Wade was overturned. “It was really important for me to have other women’s voices also in  that track,” she says. “I got these three other women who I love to join me: Domenica, Katy, and  Mayteana.” The serpentine “Weather Girl” has been germinating for years now, harking back to  Whitley’s childhood love of R&B. “As it developed, I feel like the woman who I’m becoming,  her flavors have been added as well,” she says.

“Carnaval” is a blast of celebration in a sea of changes, anchoring Whitley back behind that kit. “That’s my total drum rave, dude!” she says. “That’s Cem and I both playing drums, having  drum dialog.” It all wraps up with the elegiac “I Want to Forgive,” an almost gospel-like tune  that showcases Whitley’s honeyed vocals. “I think that the quest for forgiveness — either to  forgive another, or to forgive oneself — is this theme that our humanity keeps returning to  somehow. And so, that’s my little personal meditation on that.”

Because, in the end, wounds can’t heal unless we recognize they exist — until we begin the  process of healing. And for Whitley, that healing process lives within her music. “When I’m  singing and playing, there’s all these parts of my womanhood that are viscerally alive and where  they belong,” she says. “I struggle with my own power, and that’s also been a lot of this journey  the last couple of years: facing my own power and not being so afraid of her — the girl I was, the woman I’ve become.”