Outredore

Further affirming and transforming the singular à-la-sourdure aesthetic, ‘Outredore’ unfolds as a remarkable flowering of discoveries in both Occitan and French: hallucinatory laments, oblique rhapsodies, and carnivalesque odes. A generous and respectful invitation to forge unexpected bridges between distant sonic worlds, the album extrapolates the modal vocabulary of traditional Occitan music by intertwining it with stylistic elements drawn from across the Mediterranean. Carried by Bergez‘s most unadorned voice to date and swept up in the undertow of a troubled era, the songs of ‘Outredore’ explore the shifting relationship between the intimate and the political. Vulnerable, unsteady, and visceral, ‘Outredore’ imagines a new Occitan cançon that has traded its folk guitars for an intricate electronic machinery.

« Voices of guts and quick witted strings, the Outredore labyrinth will catch you, too. Its walls are caressed by whispers. Nocturnal toads, stubborn murmurs, trumpets from another world, or melodies you think you already know. Will the draughts make you lose your balance? Do you think you hear a limping beat? Wobbly? Visceral, mineral—you can’t quite tell. But everything holds firm in this house of cards. We’re holding firm.

The dark, carnival-like basement serves as the foundation. It sends us its radiant, benevolent rabble, its bones, its fluids, and its stones. And in the Giants’ footsteps, you stumble upon the minuscule, the delicate, the organic quality of the voice that speaks to the heart, the string riffs that cannot lie. Already you’re straightening up. And you’re holding on, too.

Marked by fragments and samples, the electronics are mischievous and mocking. The still life has living entrails. The vermin swarm to shine all the brighter. They throw mud at us to make our masks. Masks for laughter.

The tongue always in the forefront! It tells stories, snaps, and rings out. Stick it out! To grimace at the face of the powerful.

Of Outredore, may bread console us, may it be sweet to our bodies and our palates. But may the pepper sting us. »

Text by Caroline Dufau (Cocanha)

Credits :

Recordings: Ernest Bergez & Etienne Coussirat
Recorded at: Chez Lily, GMEA, L’Épicentre, La Ferronnerie, Thiers, Fillols, Pen Ar Goarimic.
Mixed by: Ernest Bergez & Johann Berger at Studio Hétaman, La Soulane.

Paintings: Charles Husser
Graphic design: Gauthier Plaetevoet
Mastering: Harris Newman