There are routes that have the apparent simplicity of the obvious and that would almost make us believe in destiny, if our souls were not already sacrificed to chaos.

Sierra Manhattan, initially Antoine Aubert’s solo project, was born in 2012 in a tiny student dorm in Annecy (FR), under the holy influence of The You Are Minez and Juan Wauters. This was in parallel with his activity of co-CEO for the label AB Records. One move to Lyon later, and his first concerts already necessitate the reinforcements of the friends league.

Arrive then Alex Van Pelt (Coming Soon, Mont Analogue, etc.), Rémi Richarme (Satellite Jockey, Kcidy, Francois Virot Band) and Flo Adrien (Neptune Football Club and Satellite Jockey) with whom Sierra Manhattan will skim Lyon’s concert venues and capsize the hearts of a growing number of loyal enthusiasts.

By the End of 2015, Atelier Ciseaux and AB records teamed up to co-release Sierra Manhattan’s album « s/t ». The tape – A side composed with solo material and B side with the full band – is surfing (laying down on the board, listening to the lapping ripples of the ocean) between love-fi pop and slacker rock. From there was born the idea of an album entirely arranged and recorded with the whole band, « Are U Single? No I’m album », during a week in March 2017 in the Beaujolais, under the supervision of Antoine « Skanky » Nouel, sound magician of many bands gravitating around AB Records.

We can listen again to the wanders of love which made Sierra Manhattan’s success and trademark as the guitars effortlessly play by themselves. We can also discover other sides of the band – close to the live experience – with a political dimension, a rock tone (with influences like Northside, The Stone Roses, Manchester’s scene, Television Personalities, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and others), rocksteady or dub (Alton Ellis, King Tubby). Sierra Manhattan, though, never quits its playfulness, ease and lightness on scene or on record.

After some plays, it is already impossible to remember the first time, the fist concert, the first record, as it becomes strictly impossible and unthinkable to imagine a world without those songs and this band. Time is like a vinyl record turning and bringing memories back to us loop after loop. (S.T. Hole)

Fléau is the solo project of Mathieu Mégemont (a.k.a Le Mage), also a member of the bands Year of No Light, VvvV, and AE.
His first eponymous album was released in 2015 by Anywave: seven darkly‑tinted tracks, recorded with only an array of analogue synths, dirtied with fuzz and drowned in spring reverb. Where the overall atmosphere evoked John Carpenter’s film-scores, some tracks were also reminiscent of Philip Glass’ minimalism. All this sustained by synthetic strings in the style of French producer Christophe, most prominent on the album’s anthemic finale Glass Cathedral.

His second album is witness to a more progressive direction. In opposition to the minimalist aesthetic of his first album, Fléau now imposes his will with a desire for the grandiose through five long narrative tracks, each one an acoustic short film projected directly on the listener’s imagination.

Reversing the ‘imaginary soundtracks’ process, he creates tracks that are like imaginary worlds without storylines. Their duration and the absence of any lyrics bringing to light both their narrative and abstract dimensions, aiming to evoke a cinematic experience through sonic textures evolving over long sequences.

Far from synthwave formulas—to which Fléau might have been previously related with—, he forbids himself from using loops and samples, instead he focusses on carefully wrought harmonic progressions. This new LP is indeed an album of progressive music, proudly inherited from a tradition of incorporating the canons of classical music into pop music, minus the virtuosity and demonstrative aspects.

Its complexity relies on the diversity of sounds and evocations: the use of crystalline arpeggios, close to glockenspiels, refers as much to Goblin’s scoring Argento’s films as to Carl Orff’s Schulwerk, with haunting echoes of forgotten nursery rhymes. In search of a form of innocence, Fléau’s approach is rooted in childhood’s contempt for good taste and permeability to emotions. Inspired by the synthetic orchestrations of Wendy Carlos, without denying their kitschy side, or popular music of the 1970s (Christophe, François de Roubaix, Ennio Morricone), he uses catchy melodies as a gateway to a more experimental aspect of his music: the chiseling and arrangement of increasingly complex sound matter, created with an ever more impressive range of synthesizers. Neither does he deny the influences of his adolescence, revealing the almost abstract dimension of black metal guitars and reactivating in his own way the leaden weight of riffing doom.

Super Montreal-based band (with members from Moss Lime, Lantern, Each Other, Soft Cone, Sheer Agony, and R U Real), PHERN, started in 2015, is putting us again in a « Cool Coma », title of their first album released by the Canadian label Fixture. Between pop oddities, multidirectional looseness and unreal lyrics, PHERN, always wearing shorts or almost, unveils two new tracks of hypnotic, brilliant and offbeat indie-rock that Universe recommends you to listen to, preferably during your « pause clope » or when you’ll have this -strange- idea to scotch two bricks together.

Despite the « amour fou » provoked by his first album, « Yes or No » (Clapping Music/ Atelier Ciseaux, 2008), FRANCOIS VIROT never went for the easy option. We had to wait until 2016 to finally listen to the Lyonnais’s new LP « Marginal Spots » (Born Bad), played -this time- in good company (with musicians from Satellite Jockey, Coming Soon, KCidy, etc.).
From this prodigious « Yes or No » there is barely nothing left, exception made from his smiling voice and this generosity to create hits. The tempo is speeding off, velcro shoes are now laced-up, FRANCOIS VIROT offers us two tornado tracks of « slacker pop » which are going to put an endless smile on your face.

This record will be available on vinyl (limited to 200 copies) on September 28th on Atelier Ciseaux and will launch the beginning of a shared tour in Canada.

This EP is a farewell letter to the first chapter of Esther’s formative years in Montréal which were punctuated by broken hearts, long nights and wavering dreams.

Exit Someone is the husband and wife duo of artists June Moon (Forever) and Thom Gillies (Vesuvio Solo). Together their sound elicits relaxed, resonant pop melodies and rhapsodic poetry. Sharing the mic, their lyrics narrate the essence of love and loss with a fixation on symbolic imagery. Rhythmically, the TR-505 drum machine is featured exclusively as an exercise of reiterating patterns to highlight the storytelling.

The couple met in the summer of 2015 playing a show in Montréal, and formed a song-writing partnership shortly after. Dry Your Eyes is their first release and defines a becoming time of musical spontaneity.

After a first excerpt, “Les Yeux En Cavale” looking like a disco-noir road trip where the horizon hits the steel sheet, LENPARROT offers us a second track, “A Fake Prophet”, from his upcoming EP. The night landscape and the ghosts abandoned on the road’s side come alive and are guided by those ethereal melodies and an almost possessed voice.

Though somewhat crudely recorded (the lively Puerto Rican festivals of his adopted Humboldt Park neighborhood made cause for some creative EQ tinkering), that EP and its follow-up, No Luck, both showed undeniable songwriting prowess, and were released by Chicago-based labels Teen River and Lake Paradise. The resulting response that ensued from these releases earned diverse comparisons ranging from Stereolab to Syd Barrett to a young Robyn Hitchcock, while also earning some gentle jibes from his peers asking if he ever left his apartment after having been labeled a ”bedroom pop artist”.

With many tracks built around the dense all-or-nothing sibilation of a Vox Jaguar organ, J Fernandez’s creations resonate deep into the inner ear, distorting sense of time and place but feeling relatable and familiar all the same. While “nostalgia” is a comfortable word to describe these tunes, not all pop music has to fall into that blasé carefree zone. In fact, that might undermine not only Fernandez’s craft, but also the amount of self-conscious awareness that makes his compositions so reflective and true.

His latest offering, “Memorize Now”, extends and refines the compact retro-futuristic pop ideas of No Luck, whilst again being recorded in his home above a stained glass studio and with Fernandez again playing the majority of instruments heard in the recordings, it gives new life to the horns, vintage organs, tape delay and bright guitar of his previous releases with some of his most confident songwriting and production to date. Grounded by the pensive “Image” and “Close Your Eyes”, the EP lifts off on the interlocking Radiophonic loops and arpeggios of “Failed Scales” and demure funk of “Cosmic Was”. Behind all of it, a loose but metronomically precise rhythm section maintains an air of effortless cool.Sounding fresh and new while mining the annals of early electronic pop and psychedelia, Memorize Now manages to pack a long-player’s share of ideas into an economical 16 minutes.