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KOU is the music project of Apolline Schöser and Thomas Coquelet, based in Lille/France.Since 2020, they're exploring song compositions :
- making concrete music into lullabies,
- playing fluffy guitars with the strings of a rope walker
- drowning jazz and non-jazz voices
- humming flutes with purring synths
- smoking piano stokes
- steeling giallo's cries to make them dance in almost groovy rhythms...
At a time of great deconstruction, one has the feeling of witnessing the birth of the music of a world after.
You can listen to there first album here :
https://aguirrerecords.bandcamp.com/album/kou
Apolline & Thomas have been performing since 2022 under the KOU guise with 24 electronic harmoniums. Producing dense layers of tones & overtones. On their debut album KOU steers in another direction. The harmonium appears occasionally, but more prominent are delicate guitar pluckings, distant vocal effects, synths, flutes, piano strokes, a touch of musical magic and Apolline’s jazz not jazz vocals.
As soon as the needle drops it’s clear we are jump-cutting straight to the other side of the mirror. Cats purr, a woman sings as if asleep, drum machines stutter and warp and Alvin Lucier is not 'sitting in a room that is not different to the one you are not in now’. If you’re already confused, join the club. But, it’s the good kind of confused, a bewildering experience akin to the first time hearing the Faust Tapes or watching Inland Empire. Wait though, as pigeons coo and the tape machine clunk-clicks a gorgeous weirdo version of Roger's and Hart’s Blue Moon emerges to let you know this isn’t just dada splurge, there’s a genius pop sensibility at work here too. Side two takes us further into the murk with mournful detuned brass, stoned Joan La Barbara-esque vocalese and a droning Farfisa hymn, before ending with another too-tempting snatch of DIY pop. Some of the references are recognisable. All kinds of 70s/80s European art prog - think early Battiato, Pierot Lunaire’s Gudrun, Lucia Bosè and Gregorio Paniagua's Io Pomodoro etc etc. There’s a strong whiff of 90s us goof-off surrealism too- Bongwater, Siltbreeze, Royal Trux’s Twin infinitives, the damaged folkier side of Alastair Galbraith, Half-Japanese, early Beck even all feel relevant.
Like an oddball group of friends you might meet by chance and end up weirding-out with for days, the minds behind this deliciously odd music allow you to stay for a while in their strange subcultural world. You might not want to live here forever but a short trip, while it lasts, rewires your brain for the better.
w/
Nev Clay
and
Beer Fear
£10 Adv - More OTD
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Lubber Fiend, 81 Blandford St,Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
Tickets
