We represent M.Sayyid (of Antipop Consortium) for booking in France & Europe.
His tracks and releases are available at Handsmade collective in Oakland, USA, and on his own Bandcamp.

M. Sayyid’s odyssey is inseparable from Antipop Consortium, the New York–based group where he served as MC and which left an indelible mark on 2000s rap with its razor-sharp style and otherworldly electronic production.

M. Sayyid continues his hyper-dimensional journey, proving above all that he is a master of voice and language—his polymorphous flow shifting between robotic precision and wild unpredictability, his writing honed and incisive, blending finely chiseled social critique with surreal, nebulous imagery.

All of it is bound together by endlessly stretched-out production, as if to tear us free from space and time.

(source : Festival Banlieues Bleues)
Booking matters : please email : kingboo @ prohibitedrecords.com

Perles, coraux & requins

Text by Emmanuel Dosda.

Open Heart
After answering the call of the wild—and that of his “mountain-dwelling ancestors”—Julien Gasc slips on mask and snorkel for an underwater expedition, a romantic introspection. The storm rages, but deep beneath the ocean’s surface, he has rediscovered tranquility.

“A shield amid the chaos”, a haven of peace where he sings of love. His melodies, influenced by heroes
João Gilberto and Chico Buarque, follow harmonic paths mapped out in his mind. With this album placed under the signs of Aquarius and Venus, he feels his body floating and alive—but also that of others, as when he inhabits the perspective of a woman “trampled and humiliated by her husband” (in Plongeon de haut vol).

It is by venturing into the abyss that the member of the supergroup Aquaserge manages to connect with his inner self—and even his unease: “I found the blue pearl on the cover in a gutter, purely by chance during a wander. This plastic jewel symbolizes, for me, the blues one sometimes feels, especially during the genesis of this record. The pearl is the image of the mother, of Mother Earth.”

Metronomic Underground
A guest musician on Stereolab’s tours—where he also performs solo opening sets—Julien Gasc was recently “targeted” by Anton Newcombe, his “idol back in the days of Dig!”. Gasc performed Re Eff in its entirety as the opening act for the band of Lætitia Sadier and Tim Gane (who appears on this record), dressed all in white—from shoes to beret—alone on stage at Berlin’s Huxleys venue, accompanied only by his laptop. “At the end of the show, Anton came up to me, comparing me to Brel or Piaf.”

The frontman of The Brian Jonestown Massacre then offered to record his next opus in his studio. Three sessions, between June 2023 and July 2024, would be needed, even though everything was already laid down during the first Berlin sequence.

“He can intimidate some, but with me he is gentle. We laughed a lot—laughed and laughed again during the studio sessions. Like a reggae producer, in the vein of King Tubby, he turns the volume up to 8/10 to capture and then sculpt the sound. He assembles, fine-tunes, captures vibrations, and visualizes an image. We work in much the same way, starting from an image that we transform into music.”

The second session was marked by a cardiac incident. After the heart attack, Newcombe ended up in the emergency room, driven there by Julien and a certain Alan McGee the following day. From his open-heart surgery, Anton would retain lasting effects: “It amplified his emotions.” There are tears in Perles, coraux & requins. Blue notes flow like drops of water, salty splashes sting the lips, adolescent bursts of breathlessness, ripples across time, sunken loves, and hearts surfing waves of melancholy.

▰ Tracklisting

1- Rosen montag (3:09)
2- Chez Martine (3 :15)
3- Le goût de tes lèvres (4 :04)
4- C’est dans le corps (4 :16)
5- Plongeon de haut vol (3 :57)
6- 16 (4 :09)
7- Patrick (3 :57)
8- Je t’aime bel et bien (2 :47)
9- Perles, coraux & requins (5 :41)
10- Déguste (4:22)

Improvised music has many faces. Quentin Rollet and Jérôme Lorichon together are an exciting mystery. In turn blowing their saxophones or trumpets and tinkering with frequencies on their effects and synthesizers, they assemble percussive sounds, feedback and breaths, inventing a material that is both loose and coherent where each element of one dialogues with the elements of the other. Both have experience with multiple groups and projects. Jérôme Lorichon played in Purr, The Berg Sans Nipple and is now part of Zombie Zombie and Quentin Rollet played in Prohibition, Red Krayola, Nurse With Wound and many others; while leading the adventure of his new label Bisou after having led the one of Rectangle for several years. The very first album from the duo will be released to mark the label’s 30th anniversary ! Quite an event !

Biography by Julien Bécourt for the Planisphère album release

Quentin Rollet and Jérôme Lorichon have worked together on a number of projects (including live soundtracks and a recent tour in China with avant-folk icon Emmanuelle Parrenin), and are back at it again following the release of their single Eléphantasme on Fabrice Laureau’s ‘handmade’ label Ouvré. Faithful to the malleable parameters of improvisation, Lorichon here abandons the drums to weave an electronic web, as rough as it is subtle, around Rollet’s improvised spurts on alto saxophone and sopranino. The abstract oscillations pulsating through the Buchla miraculously highlight Rollet’s zig-zagging melodies. Dislocated rhythms, sinusoidal welts and throbbing pulses cover the brassy roundness of the wind instrument, in a constant alternation between atonal minimalism and Dionysian frenzy. A deluge of analogue hailstones is followed by rustles, metallic resonances, rattling reeds and sighs expelled from the lungs. Somewhere between free jazz and post-industrial music, this album – recorded in one go and without overdubs – recalls at times the legendary collaboration between Wolf Eyes and Anthony Braxton. But you could just as easily imagine a jam session between Joe McPhee and Morton Subotnick in the Red Room of Twin Peaks. It’s thrilling, vibrant music, with occasional hints of anxiety, and each sound – like each interval of silence – materializes a universe of its own.

While its amplitude touches on the cosmic, it nevertheless remains anchored in the very materiality of the sound gesture and engraved in the eternal recommencement of the here and now. The two musicians, eager to experiment in all directions, turn conventions upside down to offer a musical journey whose itinerary is never mapped out in advance and whose destination remains known only to them. For this music, unique in its (non-)genre, is above all an offering to time and space, a condensation of two lives that become one through sound.

As soon as saxophonist Quentin Rollet, ambassador of free and adventurous music, starts improvising with Jérôme Lorichon, multi-instrumentalist and tamer of modular synthesizers, you won’t know what hit you! A long and solid friendship has been forged between the two musicians, who are no strangers to improvisation and have never seemed so complementary as in this instrumental battle.

Jérôme Lorichon – aka Lori Sean Berg, Dr Schönberg or Cheucheu – has been active on the indie circuit for nearly thirty years. Drummer with Purr, Berg Sans Nipple, Antilles, Capricorne Band, and percussionist with Zombie Zombie, Lorichon is a jack-of-all-trades who knows no blinkers. His live set-up includes electronic gear that he manipulates in real time, in addition to percussion and trumpet. He has toured with Jason Glasser, Emmanuelle Parrenin, Don Nino & Françoiz Breut and produced soundtracks for fashion, the visual arts, the circus and film.

Pillar of the Prohibited label, his adoptive family since he met the Laureau brothers in the early 1990s, Quentin Rollet is a key figure in French avant-rock. After starting out in the post-hardcore band Prohibition, he set up the Rectangle label in 1995 with improvised music guitarist Noël Akchoté. Some fifty titles were released on vinyl, featuring the cream of free jazz, electro-acoustic and eccentric chanson, from Fred Frith to Philippe Katerine, Derek Bailey, Costes and Joëlle Léandre. His instantly recognisable free jazz has been heard with Nurse With Wound, Red Krayola, Zombie Zombie, Pointe du Lac and countless other artists. It’s a music of the moment, perpetually suspended above the abyss, whose agility and power can be felt live on stage. Over the last few years, he has ‘miniaturised’ his electronic equipment (phone apps, mini-Korg, etc.) to coordinate with his body movements. He punctuates his melodic phrases with more noisy or drone-like flights, using the continuous breath technique. In 2017, spurred on by violinist Isabelle Magnon, he set up the Bisou Records label, dedicated to free and post-industrial arabesques. A bon vivant through and through, Quentin Rollet is also a lover of natural wine, and has been working at the famous Baron Rouge bar in Paris for the last ten years.

LIVE ! 19 March 2025 at La Marbrerie, Montreuil, NLF3 and R/A/D for the 30 Years of PROHIBITED RECORDS celebration. Informations & tickets

Video Links : Interviews

Credits :
Quentin Rollet :
 Alto & Sopranino saxophones, Korg Monotron Delay
Jérôme Lorichon :
 Buchla 208, Percussion synthesizer, Pocket Trumpet , effects
Recorded, mixed and mastered_by Fabrice Laureau in Paris, France.
Drawings by José Maria Gonzalez
Extracts from notebooks 2022-2023,_Untitled, 27x36cm, Acrylic on paper

Live picts © Laurent Orseau
Press pict 2025 © F-lor
Press Pict 2015 © N. Laureau

ROSTER : QUENTIN ROLLET & JEROME LORICHON | R/A/D | PACÔME GENTY | F/LOR | F/LOR & EMMANUELLE PARRENIN | SHANE ASPEGREN-NICOLAS LAUREAU-JEROME LORICHON-QUENTIN ROLLET Quartet | DON NINO & The Beautiful Cloud Band | PROHIBITION | SHANE ASPEGREN | M.SAYYID (Of Antipop Consortium) | TROY VON BALTHAZAR | FRANCE DE GRIESSEN | JULIEN GASC | NLF3 |

Please get in touch with us at : kingboo @ prohibitedrecords.com (remove space)

PROHIBITED KINGBOO /  TOUR DATES (DD.MM.YY)

• Quentin Rollet & Jérôme Lorichon
26.06.2026 : Pantin (F)- Les Relais Solidaires + F/lor + Carrosse + Roro Perrot

• France de Griessen
02.07.2026 : Paris (F) – Balades Sonores
05.07.2026 : Yèvre-le-châtel (F) – Aux Bons Vivres
19.09.2026 : Paris (F) – Le Chair De Poule
23.09.2026 : Montpellier (F) – Le Black Out + Julien Gasc
24.09.2026 : Toulouse (F) – Le Dada
25.09.2026 : Marseille (F) – Lollipop Music Store
11.10.2026 : Cap D’Ail (F) – Jardin Des Sauvages

• Troy Von Balthazar
21.04.2026 : Dijon (F) – Concert privé

• M.Sayyid (Of Antipop Consortium)
23.04.2026 : Le Mans (F) – Teriaki 30 ans / Le Barouf
19.06.2026 : Paris (F) – The Wrong Side + R/A/D + Qurse

• F/lor
26.06.2026 : Pantin (F) – Les Relais Solidaires + Q.Rollet & J.Lorichon+ Carrosse + Roro Perrot

• Julien Gasc
30.05.2026 : Tarnac (F)
05.06.2026 : Montreuil (F) – Le Chinois
26.06.2026 : Dijon (F) – Concert privé
29.08.2026 : Tree Music Nest (UK)
23.09.2026 : Montpellier (F) – Le Black Out + France de Griessen

• Prohibition
30.09.2026 : Montreuil (F) – La Marbrerie + Ben Shemie + Mossaï Mossaï
02.10.2026 : Bruxelles (B) – Le Botanique + Ciseaux
10.12.2026 : Besançon (F) – La Rodia + Michel Cloup
05.02.2027 : Lyon (F) – Le Périscope + Zëro

• R/A/D
19.06.2026 : Paris (F) – The Wrong Side + M. Sayyid + Qurse
25.10.2026 : Vendôme (F) – Festival Les Rockomotives

• NLF3
21.05.2027 : Paris (F) – La Philharmonie : Que Viva Mexico!

BOOKING :

• Quentin Rollet & Jérôme Lorichon
Improvised, spacey, and experimental duo featuring saxophone, Buchla, FX, and inspiration! By Quentin Rollet and Jérôme Lorichon (member of Zombie Zombie…)
Album released March 2025
File under : Electronica / Free-jazz / Improv
Stream the album • Live 30Y session à Push (2025)
2 people from Paris, France.

• R/A/D
Spectacular vocals from Californian singer Brisa Roché accompanied by the haunting guitars and electronic soundscapes of Nicolas Laureau.
Album released 26/09/2025.
File under : Art-punk / Experimental Rock / Blues
3 people from Paris, France.
Two tracks live LeCargo! • Album (2025) • Video “Cyan” (2025)

• F/Lor & Emmanuelle Parrenin
A meeting between the trippy electronica of F/LOR aka Fabrice Laureau (NLF3, Prohibition…) and the acoustic magic of the legendary Emmanuelle Parrenin.
New album 16 January 2026
File under : Electronica / Avant-Folk / Ambiant
Live 2025
2 people from Paris, France.

• Prohibition
The four founding members of the Parisian post-punk-rock band are reuniting on stage for the re-release of their timeless album ‘Towncrier’ (1996) at the end of the year. Available from September to December 2026.
Re-issue ‘Towncrier’ September 2026.
File under : Post-punk / Post-hardcore / Noise-Rock
Live at Teriaki Festival (2015) on Mowno
5 people from Paris, France.

• M. Sayyid (of Antipop Consortium)
With lightning speed, the former member of Antipop Consortium delivers a solo set halfway between unbridled electro and abstract hip-hop, more relevant than ever.
New video May 2026. First Book July 2026. New live set with video.
File under :  Electronica / Rap / Abstract Hip-hop
Arte-tracks interview • Streamer “ERROR TAPE 2” • Video
1 or 2 people from Paris, France.

• Troy Von Balthazar
The former Hawaiian frontman of the band Chokebore (USA) is now developing a folk and melancholic sound. Whether solo or in a duo, he transcends his songs on stage in a theatrical, poetic, and utterly moving performance.
New LP april 2026.
File under : Folk / LoFi / Pop
Stream the new album • Last video
1 or 2 people from Angoulème, France.

• France de Griessen
Witch-folk, romantic punk, and eccentric minimalism… France de Griessen is an interdisciplinary artist. An eternal globetrotter, she travels with her music to the four corners of the world (most recently to South Africa).
New album “Dawn Breakers” 27 February 2026
File under : Folk / Witch-Folk / Songwriting
Streaming album • Video Blue Snow 
1 people from Paris, France.

• Julien Gasc (solo / band)
Julien Gasc has established himself as a unique voice in French chanson. A talented multi-instrumentalist, he is also known for founding Aquaserge and for joining Stereolab as a keyboardist and backing vocalist in 2008-2009. Julien Gasc performs solo or with a band.
New album “Perles, coraux & requins”, 5 June 2026.
File under : Avant-Pop / Rock / Chanson
Stream the new album • Video (2022) • Video (2022) • Solo live Video
1 people from Toulouse, France. 5 people from Paris, Munich, Toulouse.

• Pacôme Genty
A rare solo set from the French songwriter with Lofi, Brazilian and experimental influences.
File under : Folk / Avant-Folk / Songwriting
Single • Video Griselda (2024) • Live au Café de la Danse, Paris
1 personne depuis Paris, France.

• Shane Aspegren / Nicolas Laureau / Jérôme Lorichon / Quentin Rollet
«”With stylistic nods to Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane, the two halves of The Berg Sans Nipple, Jérôme Lorichon (Buchla) and Shane Aspegren (Drums) reunite, while the parallel careers of prolific collaborators  Nicolas Laureau (sitar) and Quentin Rollet (saxophone) finally converge.”» The WIRE Magazine
File under : Improv / Kraut-rock / Jazz
Stream the album • Video Live 2022, release party
4 or 5 people from Paris, France.

• Don Nino & The Beautiful Cloud band
Nicolas Laureau solo songs with / Pacôme Genty, Fabrice Laureau, Ludovic Morillon, Quentin Rollet.
New album 2027.
le under : Rock/ Kraut-rock / Pop
Stream the album • Live at Maroquinerie, Paris
5 or 6 people from Paris, France.

• Shane Aspegren
Solo concert by one half of the post-everything duo The Berg Sans Nipple. A mix of drums and electronics.
New long format EP “Spiritual Cannibalism”, March 2026 on Prohibited Records.
File under : Ambient/ Electronica / Experimental
Interview in 15Questions • Streamer le EP
1 personne depuis L.A/USA ou depuis Paris, France.

• NLF3
Trio ‘Tropical-destroy’with Mitch Pirès and brothers Fabrice & Nicolas Laureau.
“Que Viva Mexico!” live score/soundtrack available in 2027.
File under : Kraut-rock / Electronica / Instrumental rock
Stream the album • Video ‘Cannette’ (2024 )• Live video La Maroquinerie, Paris (2012)
4 people from Paris, France.

Erik Minkkinen is known for his many musical projects, among others Discom, Grifu, Minitel, Noyade, Sister Iodine, pFeM, Intertecsupabrainbeatzroomboyz, and also as an activist with the Placards sessions and more.
For part of his discography, please refer to Discogs

We are glad to welcome him at Prohibited Records and to release this two (long) tracks cassette, with artwork by Yu Matsuoka.
Release date : June 14th, 2024.
Side A : “Ghosts are made without their consent and in a most ugly way by heroism” 16:48
Side B : “Solar interruption” 11:55
Recorded & mixed at studio des Taisnières, Lyons-La Forêt, France by Nicolas Laureau, summer 2021.
Erik performed with the local equipment :
“Ghosts are made without their consent and in a most ugly way by heroism” with a Crumar Orchestrator keyboard
and “Solar interruption”with an Airline Resoglass short scale guitar and a bunch of pedals.
Artwork by Yu Matsuoka.
Ref : PRO 064 – (p) & (c) Prohibited Records 2024

R/A/D: project founded in 2022 by singer/writer Brisa Roché and producer/musician Nicolas Laureau.
R/A/D: haunting duo creating collaborative slap-you-in-the-face landscapes between blues/elvin singing and drone/guitar exhalations.
R/A/D: quasi-Tantric dialogue between alarmingly raw improv, electronica, story-telling and heart-of-guitar.
R/A/D: reduction of « radical », a term used for cool/awesome in the California of the 1980s.
R/A/D: according to Brisa and Nicolas « A punk lullaby, an inner dialogue turned outer, breathing guitar, NY meets CA meets France with transformation transgender, FX, nature/mountains plus urban plus dreamscapes. FIRE and ICE. »
•
R/A/D is RAD

Outta Sight by R/A/D.
Text by Joseph Ghosn.

A joyful coincidence. This is how the two masterminds of R/A/D describe their meeting and their musical collaboration. Brisa Roché, whose long, strong, and uncompromising career is well known, recalls a concert by Nicolas Laureau, founder of Prohibition and NLF3, under his identity as Don Nino. A moment that captivated her: “I heard something familiar in the dark,” she recalls. She wondered where to buy the records by the band she’d just heard and ended up contacting Nicolas.

From this encounter, a friendship was born, and a desire to play together. Nicolas had a long-standing project simmering, a set of ideas, pieces sketched out on the guitar with a very “drone” approach. Adding Brisa’s voices to these tracks was obvious: it would take them elsewhere, into an aesthetic close to spoken word, but with many openings, something they both describe as “fire and ice”: listening to these tracks, letting ourselves be carried away by the harmonics, the voice, the breath, we’re transported into a territory of poetry and blues, of no wave and oblique pop. Here everything is possible. Probably because something youthful, by their own admission, is at play here.

“We are a young band,” say these two musicians who seem to have found in their exchanges a playfulness, a source of energy. “We make this music with the idea of ​​having fun, and of surprising.” In fact, surprise is everywhere: in the raw and powerful spareness of the guitars, the sophistication of the vocals that move from one register to another while seeming to hover over the soundscapes, the dynamics of the pieces exploring the recesses of the psyche of the two, obsessive and intimate. Listening to their music, we want to evoke the landscapes of Loren Connors, the echoes of Throbbing Gristle, more serene and less acid, but just as haunted by the strange. Nick Cave and Karen Dalton, too, somewhere, as fleeting ghosts.

And then, there is also in this music, this sound, these pieces, something of the band that gravitates around the Prohibited label: dense and exploratory sounds, desires to discover beyond imposed boundaries. As we delve into these songs, we realize that all of this also speaks to today: Brisa Roché evokes questions of contemporary female anger, but against a backdrop that reflects the languor and length of Indian music, which offers the possibility of stopping time, suspending it, as if within the sound itself.

Hearing them speak and play, we sense to what extent, beyond the overt darkness, their music lives, resists, unfolds, and grabs you. Reflecting on it, only one way to describe it comes to mind straight from the fragments and poems of Anne Waldman: Life Notes – notes of life.

R/A/D – Outta Sight – Tracklist

1. Magenta
2. Dark Blue
3. Cyan
4. Deep Blue
5. Yellow
6. Mauve
7. Red
8. Orange
9. Pink
10. Dark Green

SPECIO is Sasha Andrès x Nicolas Laureau. They started a studio collaboration back in 2018.
The first album is ready to be released, May 2024.

Spectral Night Bird

Specio is an eponymous project from a studio duo well known in independent or underground circles, male/female (Nicolas/Sasha), with a rock or even noise past (Prohibition for Laureau/Héliogabale for Andrès), now turned towards another ( besides?) jazz which takes them here to a fruitful elsewhere, which they had already touched upon through their latest respective projects (Don Nino, NLF3 / A Shape).

Sasha Andrès who sings or speaks with her different voices on the sound worlds of Nicolas Laureau.

The rich album is a series of long, strange and dreamy experiences which form open tracks which have the intelligence to send listeners back to a fertile imagination relating to parallel or secret universes.

We distinguish two kinds of temporalities on the album: effective pieces and more stringy titles, both having in common a pronounced concrete dreaminess and the rare angle of surprise

Let’s proceed with the description title by title

• Ex-Agir pays tribute to Belgian poet /writer Henri Michaux by an androgynous, full voice, accompanied by guitar and electronic worlds. A fraternity with the perfect Gnostic intellect chanted by the beat poet William Burroughs.
• Flux is a scientific narrative with a more electroluminous musical sparkle. A sort of notice listing instructions for use for an Otherwise Mastered. Like this Sharpen your heart so that it can survive the storms, the pains.
• Light Codes is a cascade of relaxed crystalline sounds, a multilingual narration of a white voice which is reminiscent of Moor Mother on Jazz Code (The album where the poet invites her guest friends to invest with her the free field of vocal tracks, Anti May 2023).
• Va Jouer ! Bird calls for a high-pitched voice, with an imaginary address to shake the listener from their torpor, appeal to their inner child and go play.
• Birds Nest displays an opening resolutely The End of the Doors, in the resonant timbral, it is a track where Sasha’s voice is much more floating, and is therefore enigmatic in an oriental color composed of harmonium and shaken maracas.
• Ouvrir  is the most “Persona” musical poetry of the album, a little irreverent suspended theater not to be put between the ears of certain young kids because of its linguistic provocation. Open¦ Let it flow¦ and don’t wait for anything.
• Vertical Janus, we hear two vocal harmonies split with cascades of strings which make me think of the strict upright piano, where we played our fingers between cousins in this immense house in Burgundy. There is a strange, suspended tone there.
• Teenage finally sounds like the awakening of this reverie but retains a shoegaze color, Cocteau Twins mixed with a soft sonic youth.
•  The bonus track Râga is the slow climax of the sessions, a thirteen-minute progressive Velvetian odyssey which takes the time to unfold like a Lewis Carrollian crossing of the mirror and occupies almost half of a rather numb side which leaves me speechless.

_ 

Sasha Andrès is also an actress renowned for her role in ‘Elle est des nôtres’ by Sigried Alnoy (2002) and she will be appearing with many actors and actresses in the play ‘Woke’ led by Virginie Despentes for the Theater of the North, which will be presented in March 2024.
Nicolas Laureau recently took a step aside with the collective project and the album ‘Scaring The Mice For Revenge’ presented at the Marbrerie de Montreuil and he seems to flourish in duo projects like ‘Covers in Inferno’ with Françoiz Breut presented at Le Consulat of Voltaire and at Petit Bain or the upcoming RAD with Brisa Roché.

Stan Degré, 2024

_

Crédits :
Sasha Andrès : vocals, percussions, noises
Nicolas Laureau : guitars, keys, piano, drums
All lyrics by Sasha Andrès.
Guitars by Erik Minkkinen on Vertical Janus
Recorded and mixed by Nicolas Laureau, 2018-2023 at Salon de Musique(s), Pantin and Studio des Taisnières, France. Mastered by F/lor.

A tireless firefly of the Indie scene and a gifted jack-of-all-trades, Pacôme Genty already has a great career behind him. Nearly twenty years ago, he distinguished himself in the duo Rrose Tacet, a condensation of psychedelic-folk arabesques and dream pop with limpid guitars, influenced by the DIY-folk of Akron Family and the more electronic experiments of Animal Collective. Pacôme affirmed his taste for songs with psychedelic convolutions and convoluted structures.
Within Erevan Tusk, one of the most acclaimed pop groups of the 2010s, Pacôme fully revealed his panoply as a two-speed songwriter, where his penchant for experimental DIY is nestled in pop songs filled with fiery rock, in the wake of Band of Horses and Arcade Fire. The group’s adventure ended in 2019, leaving two splendid albums and an EP.
After the group split, Pacôme experimented solo and returned to the stage with singer Arman Méliès, a musical tutor who became an advisor and outside ear during the recording of Hestia.
“He was my guitar teacher when I was in high school. We became close afterward. He helped me with the composition on the record, notably by simplifying chord sequences.” He also shared a tour with Don Niño, a big brother he met one evening in 2008 when Rrose Tacet opened for NLF3 in Berlin. Both hold this attraction for the secret flaw, a melancholy tinged with indolence.
It was from his lair in Gâtinais, where he settled in 2021 during periods of confinement, that Pacôme simmered this album alone, with inflections that are by turns ecstatic, gentle and sunny.
“I asked a visual artist friend to use one of his abstract paintings for the cover. It looks like a vertical sound wave. From there, I dove into Greek Mythology and came across Hestia, the goddess of sacred fire and the hearth. It turns out it overlapped with themes and moods that crossed my life during this period: independence, home, joy, modesty… It is a ‘fictionalized’ transcription of a few years of my life through this feminine divinity. She became the narrator and the main thread of the record. “
Extension of a Debut Album which had already made a strong impression in 2021, Hestia reflects its predisposition for a truant pop which prefers to engage with humility on side paths rather than taking the shortest path to get from one point to the other.
Like his improvised music duo Des Édens, inspired by Gustave Flaubert and Mark Hollis, or his experimental project Mascara Snake, (named after Captain Beefheart’s clarinetist), Pacôme Genty spawns here with the atmospheres of Bedroom Pop and the most creative Lo-Fi ambient of the 1980s, where acoustics unashamedly reached out to synthesizers.
“The more you strip away, the more likely it is to age well. I recorded a lot from home, and the mixing was done by Nicolas Laureau (Don Niño).”
This introspective idiom which he has made his compositional axis is also found in his pictorial practice. “I am very interested in the links between music and the visual arts. I have been painting for four years and it inspires me a lot to write songs.”
Of the fifteen titles composed between 2021 and 2023, Pacôme ultimately only retained eight. Eight ballads of intoxicating lightness, sometimes covered with a light veil of electronics, cosmic jazz touches on the transverse flute, a clarinet chant that nonchalantly caresses the ear or a saxophone shrouded in reverb. We can discern in discreet touches the reminiscences of the instrumental experiments of the Made to Measure compilations (Harold Budd, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, etc.). “There are a lot of synthesizers, electric guitar but also flutes, clarinet and twelve-string acoustic guitar. I have always liked this type of contrast, we find them in most of the artists who have inspired me. »
In the house of Pacôme Genty also resonate the solar arpeggios of Caetano Veloso (Without, Minha Querida), Arthur Russell (Outside) or Cass McCombs (Griselda), assumed inspirations which invite themselves to the table without ever becoming cumbersome.
His very particular vibrato softly coats the soul nestled behind his words. The strength of these restrained songs comes from their great sophistication.
Emotion is there, but never demonstrative, as if kept at a distance to make it better felt. Pacôme Genty manages to accomplish what is undoubtedly the most complex thing for a musician: to give abstract feelings the texture and consistency of reality. Folk fugues and cyclothymic mood, wood fire and the fires of love, time and mishap: a form of embellishment always finds its way into his songs. There is also no question of giving in to the prevailing fatalism or bending under the burden of a warlike world; empathy and lightness are imperative in order not to let oneself be defeated.
An ode to a joyful asceticism which involves self-sufficiency, Hestia’s odyssey ends with a final weightless instrumental track (Modesty), like the unexpected meeting between Fennesz and Duruttti Column in a final luminous breakthrough which welcomes twilight. Reach the Palace of Wisdom without bringing it back, make the journey that takes you elsewhere while remaining there, separate yourself from yourself to better appreciate the world in your immediate presence. Solitude here seems cultivated rather than suffered, and the album reveals a skin-deep sensitivity that never lapses into pathos. Between walks in the woods, vigil by the fire and the fading heat of summer, this pavilion of dreams invites you to curl up in a cocoon so comforting that you never want to leave it. An entire disc, peaceful, which suggests that Pacôme, after having “searched for years for a place that corresponds to [him]”, has perhaps finally found it. Has Hestia given him her blessing?
Julien Bécourt

Credits :
Produced by Pacôme Genty and Nicolas Laureau. Mixed by Nicolas Laureau. Mastered by Fabrice Laureau._With : Alexandre Viudès : drums on #3 & #5. Adrien Soleiman : vocals and piano on #4. Renaud Rozner : electric guitar on #6. Nicolas Laureau : electric guitar on #1, #2, #3 & #5. Arnaud Sèche : flute on #4, #5 & #7. Marc-Antoine Perrio : electric guitar on #8. Arman Méliès : help on #6 & layout. Pacôme Genty : vocals, keys, guitars, clarinet, beatbox. Front painting by Damien Caccia. CD Pacôme picture by Terence Hassen.

1 – Griselda (04:53)
2 – Without (04:42)
3 –  Talk/Walk (05:20)
4 –  Minha Querida (02:46)
5 –  Outside (04:43)
6 –  Lonely As A Cloud (04:08)
7 –  Saint Elmo (04:11)
8 –  Modesty (04:03)
9 –  The River (Bonus track on bandcamp only) (04:29)