The [PIAS] Store

I am very happy to be sharing my new song Pesnopoïka, accompanied by a video and a bouquet of three additonal tracks. I’ve been interested in Bulgarian traditional music for years now. While doing some research on the subject I came across the word pesnopoïka, which I thought sounded beautifully and strangely familiar. I learned that in traditional weddings the vocal part of the music is almost exclusively performed by the women in groups. Except during the most festive moments when a particularly good singer is recognized as pesnopoïka and sings solo accompanied by musicians.

Pesnopoïka is clearly a declaration of love. But I did not want to write a desperate love song, not a woman longing for an absent man. I wanted it to be risky and organic, with a touch of humour. Pesnopoïka is a dance in circles around the feeling of love. Musically, it is a song which assembles several of my obsessions; a long harmonic cycle, an unleashed guitar solo recorded in one take, an a capella section, a rhythm you can dance to. My voice is either isolated, or duplicated, in two or in a multitude, until being a choir of pesnopoïka. She is / I am a split personality somehow, playing with the point of you. She is / I am the voice which asks to be followed, which tells a story, but which never says who she is. She is / I am the pesnopoïka, singing for a traveling lover, and dancing in circles. The vision is blurred, the images overlap, she is / I am in a trance.

The Pesnopoïka video is both an homage to Bulgarian folklore and a blurred portrait of the mysterious pesnopoïka. I was finally able to go to Bulgaria in June 2022, during a series of festive ceremonies celebrating the rose Damascena they are traditionally cultivating. These ceremonies have been beautifully captured by Adrien Selbert, who I had already worked with on the short film Taking Flight in 2021. This time we wanted to focus on the texture of the video, for it to be like a moving painting; the colours melting, the dresses whirling and the dance patterns leading to a visual trance.”