Trost

Annika Line Trost entered the world on 21 May 1977 in Berlin, Germany. By age ten she had abandoned piano studies in favor of drumming instruction. Berlin’s enduring punk scene soon drew her into local groups, and throughout her teenage years she performed in garage bands steeped in 1960s influences, achieving modest results. At twenty she set aside her drum kit for a sampler, rapidly learning its capabilities and crafting techno tracks that attracted the attention of Digital Hardcore Recordings. The label promptly booked her as an opening act for Atari Teenage Riot and Shizuo, sending her across Europe and America during the final years of the 1990s.

In 1998 Trost formed the duo Cobra Killer alongside Gina V. D’Orio, formerly of EC8OR; reviewers frequently compared the project to a female incarnation of Suicide, built around two vocalists and a sampler. While sustaining her work with Cobra Killer, she issued her first solo recording in 2002, unveiling a markedly unsettling and spectral style. Though stylistically remote from Cobra Killer, the album resonated more closely with her existing audience than might have been expected and signaled considerable promise. Only in 2006 did the follow-up, Trust Me, appear on Four Music Productions. Cut in Berlin and Australia with players drawn from Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds and the Devastations, the record delivered an eerie, disquieting atmosphere certain to elicit grim satisfaction and repeated listens from admirers of the Bad Seeds.