News

L'Eclair x VERTIGO

L’Eclair, the electrifying and genre-hopping Swiss ensemble formed and led by Bulgarian brothers Stef and Yavor Lilov, have shared “VERTIGO,” an explosive, high-energy instrumental synth anthem from their upcoming debut album, Cloud Drifter, out June 20. Beginning with rumbling pad synths and a complex, polyrhythmic drum groove, “VERTIGO” makes nods to French house while swelling to truly climactic heights. One of only a handful of instrumental songs on their first album to prominently feature vocals, this single is both a return to form for L’Eclair and a marked step forward for the band.

Meticulously crafted over the last four years, Cloud Drifter marks a departure from L’Eclair’s signature instrumental music, featuring vocals from a wide slate of frequent collaborators – including Pink Siifu, girl named GOLDEN, Gelli Haha, INES and more. Having toured with the likes of The Cinematic Orchestra and WITCH–including writing and recording for the latter’s 2023 and forthcoming 2025 albums–and produced for wide-ranging artists including Varnish La Piscine and Allah-Las member Maston, the Lilov brothers have assembled a vast network of likeminded musicians. Across Cloud Drifter, they keenly curate a cohesive vision incorporating many disparate contributions.

The release of “VERTIGO” follows Cloud Drifter lead single “ODESSOS,” a driving and atmospheric album highlight that transmits the infectious energy of the band’s live shows, featuring vocals from Phoebe Coco and A Ghost Column – listen here.

L’Eclair has built an international fanbase thanks to its impressive command of rhythm, dynamics and electro/acoustic alchemy, which has nodded equally to vocal-free titans such as Can and Tortoise, expansive, spacey and blissed-out jams (2021’s Confusions) and more stripped-down, feel-good and genre-jumping destinations (the 2018 debut Polymood). Two live sessions for KEXP have accumulated nearly 900,000 views combined, beaming L’Eclair onto the playlists of adventurous listeners around the world. 

Check out the playlist put together for Talkhouse.

Pre-order Cloud Drifter here.

Maria Chiara Argirò x Forest City

Maria Chiara Argirò (pronounced ma-REE-ah key-AH-rah r-gee-ROW) marks herself as an exciting new name in electronic, jazz-fusion. After quietly weaving her way around the UK jazz, classical and electronic worlds, the trained pianist (since the age of nine) has cemented herself as a key player in the capital’s multi-national jazz scene. Maria has released a few solo and collaborative records (Flow was The Guardian’s jazz album of the month and nominated as album of the year in the Jazz Revelations Awards), but her album, Forest City feels like the turning of a page as she liberates herself from the structures of jazz.
In Forest City, Maria finds a glistening thread between these movements: where jazz meets Kelly Lee Owens, Jon Hopkins and Radiohead. It’s a concept record, about the “duality of nature and city”, where organic sounds and textures seem to flow above the urban sprawl.
Maria had finished writing the album before the first lockdown but the enforced isolation helped to give the music a sense of urgency, a longing to be immersed in the natural world and the buzz of the city at the same time. The songs always start as something she can play acoustically, that would work without the bells and whistles, and then she layers the atmosphere around them. 
Though the album has dark undertones, it’s not all doom and gloom: in her earthy metropolis, a certain optimism glows through. “It’s about being conscious of the world we live in and how careful we need to be,” Maria explains. “At the end of the day, there is hope”.
Maston x Souvenir (Album)

In 2018, composer/producer Frank Maston was living in Paris, working on new music when he was introduced to Geneva based band L’Eclair. Blown away by what he heard, there seemed to be a mutual understanding and appreciation for that loungey, groovy world of library and soundtrack music from the seventies. An immediate thought occurred to him - what if he could record with this simpatico group backing him up? The result is the colorful and kinetic album Souvenir, out today September 10 on Innovative Leisure / Calico Discos (the label of Cali band Allah Las).
To accompany the album release, Maston is sharing a new animated video for album single "Do You Feel It Working?" According to Maston "This song was written in the summer of 2018 and recorded in February 2019. It was the first vocal song I wrote since my debut album. L’Eclair joins me on the recording, which was engineered and mixed by Jasper Geluk at Tone Boutique in Haarlem. I’m playing the Rhodes Piano and singing.   The video was animated by Mark Neeley.”
For more on Maston, please visit these two sites: