AMBIANCE ARGILE / L'étrangleuse

L’étrangleuse is two girls and two boys who play a form of undefined minimalist rock and four-part free song, amplifying the dialogue between a pedal harp in bird’s-eye maple and a djéli n’goni in goatskin, underpinned by the archaic grooves of a rhythm section adorned with trinkets.

L’étrangleuse’s shelter is a Touareg tent lost in the immensity of the frozen tundra, where the spirits of The Ex and Brigitte Fontaine stir up secret hymns of a new structure for the world, finally governed by poetry.

Elusive and irresistible, the music plunges us into a darkness which owes as much to the twilight of the old world as to the dawn of the wide-open spaces where furious dances of joy are crackling and popping. Squeaking bows and materials stuck between the strings, saturation and percussion of incongruous objects, feverish spinning and psychedelic choruses are the charms of this nuanced trance.

Poems, manifestos, dreams or nightmares, it could ultimately be that the songs only speak of reality. As Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”.

Tirelessly tracking the magic of almost nothing, for 15 years L’étrangeuse has been composing the modal and unconventional soundtrack of a long waking dream, drawing its inspiration from the tra- ditional tunes of a country that does not exist.