Memories to come

Description

Maël Salètes and Mélanie Virot were doing roughly the same job when they met. They plucked strings. Not the same ones, and differently. She had been playing the harp since the age of eight. A classical path, conservatory, chamber music. He had been trying his hand at electric guitar since a first grunge-leaning rock band, MacZde Carpate, followed by a few others, including Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp.
Here they are in the summer of 2008, each idle, seeking the unusual. A sound. Harp and guitar together. Electrified, both of them. With new ideas in the distribution of roles. Reputed to be soft and crystalline, the harp could become incisive, abrasive or dissonant. And the guitar, conversely, could take on a less punk stance, more oriented toward the African trance of Malian or Mandingue music.
Neither strictly rock, world nor folk, L'Etrangleuse's sound has built bridges. A first album set out its manifesto, with their voices in addition to accompany the instruments: singing more than song, threading words through the fabric of the strings, sustaining tension, suggesting atmospheres.
The duo has forged a know-how whose limits are pushed back by this new album. All this under the attentive ear of English producer John Parish. It is a matter of noise and silence, of drift and confinement, of identity. Harp and guitar: a makeshift alliance, a creative constraint, and a permanent challenge.