Artist: Flavien Berger Album: Plouf! (Léviathan) Label: Pan European Recording Link: paneuropeanrecording.com Style: Pop, French chanson
Parisian Flavien Berger comes from a family involved in the film industry, and his father is also a jazz critic. As a teenager, he listened to rap and discovered composition with the game Music 2000. While studying at ENSCI – Les Ateliers, he formed the Sin collective with other students, where he was responsible for the sound design of their creations. They later moved to Brussels, and it is from the Belgian capital that the artist releases his music, where he has made a name for himself with two EPs and, above all, his first album in 2015, which demonstrates great originality in compositions based on electronics and home studio recording.
Plouf! is an in-depth reinterpretation, ten years on, of that first album. This time around, Flavien Berger has chosen to abandon computers and sequencers in favor of musicians who will literally recompose his tracks. The result is a more organic sound, somewhat timeless, reminiscent of when the great French arrangers experimented with psychedelia. It suggests Jean-Claude Vannier or the weightless moments of Alain Goraguer’s soundtrack for the movie Planète Sauvage. The collective and the acoustics take us to musical lands that play with the usual reference points, provided we pay attention.
The new Léviathan hasn’t completely lost its aquatic sounds, but it has gained a warmth and fluidity that only playing as a group can bring. And indeed, it is the musicians and their instruments that are brought to the fore. The vocals are placed just below them, favoring their contribution to the atmosphere rather than the comprehension of the lyrics. The timbres, and in particular the sound of the synthesizer, seem to pay homage to French studio recordings of the 1970s, when artists experimented with sound without completely letting go.
Already a household name in her native Quebec, Lou-Adriane Cassidy takes the world by surprise with the release of her second album, Triste Animal, in 2025, full of visceral, acoustic pop that veers between folk and rock.
The 27-year-old hails from the province of Quebec, and the world of music is no stranger to her, as her mother is a well-known singer, her aunt a cellist, and her father a professor of music at Laval University, one of Canada’s leading universities. In 2016, she took part in the La Voix talent show and other competitions before releasing her own music. Her debut album, released three years later at the age of 22, earned her critical and public acclaim beyond the borders of the country of her birth. In 2025, the release of Triste Animal completes the diptych it forms with the album Journal d’un Loup-Garou, released in January.
Sung as the first entirely in French, Triste Animal differs slightly from its predecessor, adopting a Pop style close to Folk that, while still catchy, is more immediate. The artist refocuses on acoustic instruments and is less concerned with adding sounds or studio effects, that could sometimes seem raunchy. As a result, the tracks are less focused on the quest for popularity, but are able to touch the listener in a different way and arouse emotions, with intimate lyrics, albeit less personal than those of Journal d’un Loup-Garou.
Lou-Adriane Cassidy’s long years of choral singing are evident in the many female voices, which support the artist on harmonies, where choirs or canons dot the record. Without going so far as to give the impression of having been recorded in concert, the choice to limit the number of takes and studio intervention leaves the listener free to feel the musical momentum that binds the musicians together, and their complicity. Keeping a hint of warmth in the overall rendering, the timbres of the instruments can be appreciated within a soundstage that is well laid out, if not exuberant.
