Vinyl | Gisèle Pape - Pebble

From her training at the Belfort Conservatory, where she studied liturgical organ, Gisèle Pape has retained a solid musical background; from her time at the Louis-Lumière school, where she made experimental films for which she composed the soundtrack, she developed a taste for editing and working with sound and visual material. After finishing her studies, she dedicated herself more seriously to music and developed a unique, atmospheric visual universe where songs are never a mere sonic rendition of a text. In 2016, "Oiseau" was released, her first EP featuring dreamlike soundscapes and electronic refrains, revealing the influence of fables. Soon after, she was offered opening acts for Mathieu Boogaerts, La Féline, Alex Beaupain, Vincent Delerm, and Malik Djoudi. Enriched by this stage experience, Gisèle Pape wrote and composed the successor to "Oiseau". "Caillou," her first album, is rooted in the harsh social context of recent years, as well as in the growing awareness of climate change threatening the planet. If "Oiseau" was a closed-off, introspective work, "Caillou" opens up to vast spaces and the world around us. The tone is set from the very first seconds, with the sounds of a storm and insects that open "Le chant des pistes," a captivating meditation on the successive transformations of landscapes over time, on the trace we will retain of disappeared or disappearing eras. The vocabulary of nature and the elements is omnipresent on the album. The question of connection – with others, nature, or the social body – runs through the album like a common thread. While the voice carrying the songs is crystalline in its gentleness, it confidently questions our relationship with what surrounds us and tracks the beauty of moments and exchanges that enrich our lives. Gisèle Pape conceived, arranged, and produced these ten tracks solo, but throughout the recording and mixing process, she sought the external perspective of Xavier Thiry (producer/arranger for Fishbach or La Féline) to help her steer in the desired direction: that of an album with more pop structures, more rhythmic and embodied, where the voice finds its rightful place within a rich musical tapestry. While the themes explored are sometimes dark, the songs lean towards a form of hope by exploring the place we choose to occupy here and now and the spaces for reverie that we can build within them. "Caillou" is a bridge between yesterday and tomorrow, between cities and plains, between the intimate and the world: a beautiful, luminous album carried by a poetic breath, to find warmth in difficult times.