Drawing on uncommonly disparate musical backgrounds the members of Snowapple form a remarkable ensemble, with the three central voices by turns merging into majestic harmonies and peeling off severally into moving solo peregrinations. Their giddy leapfrogging between genres, combined with the wide range of instruments they play, effectuates an incomparable sound.
Brimming with rich, luscious melodies and bizarre but beautiful chord changes. My mouth was left agape.
—Vic Galloway, BBC Radio 1
Sometimes the hardest part of telling a story is choosing what to leave out.
The three women of Snowapple have done a lot of living, more so than many bands twice their age. Beneath the surface of this oftentimes unassuming folk/chanson trio are a tangle of experiences.
Laurien has an international career as an opera singer, but also finds time to moonlight with gypsy punk groups, model the outfits of fashion designer Mo Benchellal and read post-graduate physics. Laura is a composer and synthesizer enthusiast. Una is a celebrated jazz singer who has sung with bands all across the Netherlands and France (and is also the daughter of beloved South African saxophonist/flautist Sean Bergin, who found notoriety performing illegally with mixed ensembles during apartheid).
Their eponymous debut record (released in 2013 on V2 Records in Benelux and Debt Records in the UK) is beautiful and beguiling in equal measures, full of catchy pop-folk numbers punctuated with the occasional nod to the more sinister side of the human condition. Their new album Illusion has strains of the modern fairytale about it – enchanting, alluring and beguiling… with a few perilous twists along the way.