èlg et la chimie + charlène darling

èlg et la chimie

since his first bedroom album in 2004, ‘Le prototype de l’homme bébé’, laurent gérard, aka èlg (pronounced “ailgue” or “hellg”), began writing songs, tales, and ballads in french. he uses these popular formats as laboratories in which he stretches, shrinks, or dissolves the sacred verse-chorus-verse-bridge formula.

his eternal curiosity for pop music—both its best and worst creations, its ability to craft narratives within a brief timeframe, to stretch an earworm for miles, and to serve as a bridge between all socio-cultural classes—has always been a close companion in his musical explorations, from the grotesque to the scholarly. Èlg has always had an obsession, due to the difficulty of the task, with questioning, twisting, bending, and unfolding his native language—sometimes to the point of glossolalia—making french tremble and jump to extract a kind of prose where rhymes exist, not through word endings, but through image associations and textures. In èlg’s lyrics, recurring themes emerge, such as the demonic double, the vertigo of the mundane linked to the metaphysical, the mental bestiary, and long hallucinatory lists.

after the release of his latest solo album, ‘dans le salon du nous’, on the vlek label in 2021, the desire for a live and collective adaptation of some of its pieces emerged. the group èlg et la chimie was born and soon stabilized as a trio with drummer johann mazé and bassist/singer marie nachury. èlg regularly brings in new song skeletons, which the group arranges collectively, tests, and reshapes throughout their tours. they expand their imaginary house, adding choirs in the corridors, skylights in the attic, and inflating emotion into a cinemascope-like scale while maintaining the constraint that the voice and lyrics remain as intelligible as possible—bare and unadorned. after a slow maturation, an album was finally recorded in the studio in 2024 and is set to be released at the end of 2025.

elg et la chimie sing about harmony, probable war, introspection, escapism into dreams, media manipulation, and the loss of empathy through poetic kaleidoscopes and paradoxical image collages—sometimes gentle, even cheesy, sometimes abrupt and martial—offering a narrative akin to a feature film with an unpredictable pulse. a succession of sung, whispered, spoken, and screamed scenes, punctuated by melodic layerings, heart-wrenching ballads fit for stadium concerts, folk nursery rhymes, electronic mantras, and musical comedy finales.

èlg et la chimie attempt to draw their own celestial map of pop. richard dawson, céline dion, magma, philippe katerine, pharoah sanders, mica levi, tom zé, and charlene darling all appear in shadow at some point in this odyssey.

èlg is also half of the duo opéra mort and was one-third of les reines d’angleterre alongside ghédalia tazartès and jo tanz, as well as part of the trio orgue agnès with sa terral and sourdure. he regularly composes for cinema, radio, and theater. marie nachury performs solo under the name mille. she was part of the duo brice et sa pute, l’arfi, and le grand sbam. she is currently active within the band fantomas and the vocal ensemble stimmlippe. she also composes vocal pieces for live performances. johann mazé, who performs solo under the name jihem rita, has also been seen in france sauvage, le cercle des mallissimalistes, lord rectangle, and chausse trappe. he composes for theater as part of compagnie ola.

èlg - Vocals, amplified guitalélé, keyboard
marie nachury - vocals, bass, keyboard
johann mazé - vocals, percussions

charlène darling (be)

‍charlène darling is the main pseudonym of charlotte kouklia, a self-taught musician born in 1988.
her influences range from experimental music to 60s girl groups, with a taste for minimalism, gentle dissonance
and improvisation. seemingly straight forward, charlène darling's songs exert a fairly solid tension that stems from silences and accidents, with a delivery that's often more on-tune than it appears. the lyrics, too, oscillate between cryptic poetry and blunt directness.

While Charlène Darling's group compositions tend to take the form of deviant pop rock, her solo work is based on improvisation and hybrid instrumentations, with asynchronous loops and a capella melodies.

photo èlg et la chimie by © photo by marie losier