Maël Salètes and Mélanie Virot were doing roughly the same thing when they met. They plucked strings. Not the same ones, and in different ways. She had been playing the harp since the age of eight. A classical path, conservatory, chamber music. He had been dabbling in electric guitar since his first grunge-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, looking for something unusual. A sound. Harp and guitar together. Both electrified. With new ideas in the distribution of roles. Reputed to be gentle and crystalline, the harp could become incisive, abrasive, or dissonant. And the guitar could, conversely, take on a less punk stance, more oriented towards the African trance of Malian or Manding music.
Neither strictly rock, world, nor folk, L'Etrangleuse's sound built bridges. A first album provided the manifesto, with their voices accompanying the instruments: more chanting than singing, weaving words into the fabric of the strings, maintaining tension, suggesting atmospheres.
The duo has developed a savoir-faire whose boundaries are pushed by this new album. All under the discerning ear of English producer John Parish. It's about noise and silence, drift and confinement, identity. Harp and guitar: an alliance of fortune, creative constraint, and a permanent challenge.
Amazon
eBay
Rare Vinyl
