OVALE, OUT MAR 23, 2023 VIA BOILED RECORDS
FRENCH EXPERIMENTAL POP PROJECT OF FRÉDÉRIQUE ROY READIES SOPHOMORE ALBUM OVALE - FT. MEMBERS OF BERNICE, VICTIME, CORRIDOR
WATCH / SHARE “LA MITE” HERE
BUY / STREAM “LA MITE” HERE
PRE-ORDER OVALE HERE
“La Mite” Video Still / Directed by Simon Labbé
Lune très belle is the nü fusion project of Montréal composer, poet, and singer Frédérique Roy. Her music is an open form, at once unstable and reassuring: a pop neology of environmental sound. Today, Roy shares new song “La mite,” introducing the second iteration of her ensemble, this time featuring Robin Dann and Philippe Melanson of Toronto indie pop collagists Bernice on backing vocals and percussion, Samuel Gougoux of VICTIME, Corridor, Kee Avil on electric bass/synths, and Simon Labbé on guitars/synths. With chiming keys and plucked guitar cycling in gentle loops, rattling found sound percussion and alien atmospherics fraying its outline, “La mite” alternates between moments of consonance, and exhales of ambience. Marking the announcement of Lune très belle’s sophomore album Ovale – out March 23, 2023 via Boiled Records – “La mite” arrives today with a mesmerizing music video created by band member Labbé.
“‘La mite’ tells a story of blind spots and of desires. The heart is like a big oval fruit, its shape revealing in contact with cold water, a lake like a big mirror staring up at you.” Frédérique Roy says. “Simon created a video for the song, a gracious horse in the daylight and my face endlessly mutating.”
LA MITE SINGLE ARTWORK // HI-RES DOWNLOAD
The “deliberately deliberate” music of Lune très belle follows a tortuous path that evokes the synergy and sensitivity of the players to one another. A platform for her to explore new sounds through new collaborations, Roy’s compositions, words, and arrangements are beautifully intuited by its players. “Ovale would never sound the way it sounds without the creativity, generosity, talent and input of Simon, Sam, Phil and Robin. I came with compositions, words and arrangement ideas,” Roy says, “and their ability to interpret, improvise, and enter in a dialogue with the material played a big role in actualizing the arrangements and the making of the album.”
Lune très belle originated in 2016 as an ensemble for Roy’s song explorations. The project released its debut album Ô la lune in 2019, a raw and mostly live recording that Roy describes as a series of long shared breaths. More akin to the sound of wind chimes in waves, “La mite” is lushly draped with melody. The previously released Ovale track “Mona” embodies the allure of a shifting castle where rooms of different dimensions and volumes bleed into each other. In contrast to the minimalism of “La mite,” “Mona” utilizes layering to create a rich entanglement of unrepeated phrases and unexpected interjections. The result is a boldly tentative compositional experience that occupies the vaporous space of artists like Grouper, with the sonorous palette of Pat Metheny, anchored by the pop affliction of Arthur Russell.
A patient process of care and diligence, at times involving onerous negotiations and confusion, Ovale resolves itself in the beauty of the unresolvable. Roy’s work unfolds through a slow process of tending to sensations and the affective traces they leave on her, turning these traces into words and music just as fleeting. To stay true to the oblique nature of this form of translation, the texts and songs she assembles propose no clear paths to follow, but the process of wandering itself as an image. Roy, who is a published poet and works by day providing alternative resources to psychiatrized people, has created in Ovale a fluid, softly whelming suite of natural music that is built on the interaction, and closeness, of its players. “New sounds through new collaborations” is Roy’s driving force on Ovale. “I wanted to make a coherent object, truthful to my instinct,” she says. From Roy’s elegant texts, to the band’s beautiful articulation of their essence, Lune très belle’s Ovale is elemental and elastic – patient, viscous melodies, with cascades of incidental jazz, anti-form chamber pop, sung delicately in French with vaporous accompaniment from its ensemble.
ALBUM ARTWORK // HI-RES DOWNLOAD
OVALE TRACKLISTING
1. La mite
2. Refrain skylark
3. Moisissure
4. Maison
5. Refrain
6. Mona
7. Dogue
8. Siffleux
9. Œil magique
10. Refrain choral
11. Bye bye
PHOTO CREDIT: STACY LEE // HI-RES DOWNLOAD