about the record

Clément Vercelletto first emerged in Kaumwald, where he and Ernest Bergez blended club music, avant-garde, and imagined folk rumors like warped children’s hoops. Recently, under the guise of Sarah Terral, he has wrestled wildly with modular synths, producing some of the most abrasive, poetic, and mercurial sounds in recent memory. More recently, he has taken up the bagpipes.

L’Engoulevent is the first record to appear under his real name. Entirely composed on a small electronic organ—both rudimentary and surprisingly complex—whose pipes have been replaced by bird calls controlled via a MIDI interface designed by the musician and built by luthier Léo Maurel, the album was recorded in three acoustically contrasting locations, ranging from an ultra-dry studio to former wine silos with a twenty-second resonance.

Despite its disparate palette, the result is perfectly coherent and might be described as contemporary music. However, its creator, more geographer than historian, calls it "landscape music." It weaves nimbly from one composition to the next, conjuring visions of low-pulse dwarf techno, submerged folk music from distant lands, field recordings of a half-imaginary territory, and theater for the ear.

Through its titles and materials, Vercelletto summons an ensemble of animal displays, mineral properties, vegetal delinquency, sandy coves, rocky headlands, and humble marshes. Full of clattering key clicks, valve chirps, muffled polyrhythms, electronic sighs, and ghostly breaths, L’Engoulevent offers music that is at once anxious and enchanted, capturing the sound of a vibrant, hypersensitive living fabric—our own.