Rasputina

The New York City-based trio Rasputina formed under the leadership of singer and songwriter Melora Creager, a classically trained cellist who had supported Nirvana throughout the band's concluding tour. Creager ran a classified ad in 1992 to recruit fellow cellists for a rock project, drawing a response from Canadian player Julia Kent; Polish-born Agnieszka Rybska joined shortly afterward, completing the original lineup. Their tightly laced Victorian-era costumes helped shape a distinctive visual identity, and the resulting gothic chamber-pop style soon attracted Sony, which released the debut album Thanks for the Ether in 1996. The following year brought the EP Transylvanian Regurgitations, containing remixes contributed by admirer Marilyn Manson, while How We Quit the Forest arrived in 1998. Entering the new decade, Rybska and Kent departed and were succeeded by Nana Bornant and K. Cowperthwaite. A contract with Instinct led to Cabin Fever, issued in spring 2002. Bornant exited that June, and Cowperthwaite left four months later. Cellist Zoe Keating and Jonathon TeBeest, the ensemble's first male member, joined in time to appear on the Lost & Found EP released in 2003. Frustration Plantation, widely regarded as the group's most unified recording, followed in spring 2004. Oh Perilous World surfaced in 2007 as a loosely linked suite assembled from newspaper clippings that lead singer Melora Creager had collected across two years and then paired with the trio's established 18th-century steampunk aesthetic.