Aurélien Bachelet

August has arrived. So where do I stand?

I've mixed our Réminiscences album to 90%. A first private listen was sent to my participants. The feedback is overwhelmingly positive, they praise the work and rediscover the songs, now dressed in a pro sound.

I'll get back to it in late August / early September to finalize the few corrections they'll have suggested, and I'll master the whole thing before preparing the release.
But in the meantime, this summer, I also need to find the album cover and decide on the album name (actually, it's nearly done!).

After that, I dove into editing and mixing my new EP. The work wasn't as advanced, so even though I've already spent time on it, I still have a lot of work ahead. I'm planning a release this autumn, after Réminiscences, spaced out enough not to blur the two releases, and it gives me room to breathe on the production of this EP.
I've had a hard time getting back into its atmosphere, to be honest. The period has been mega busy, I haven't been carefree enough. These are musics and texts that really demand a certain state of mind.

So I'll go find it by visiting my cliffs, plunging into the ocean, and gazing at the starry sky. This is exactly what the lyrics are about, exactly what inspired these songs.
I'll come back with renewed energy.

I have so many other ideas that I'm eager to finalize these projects to try them out.

See you in mid-summer and then back-to-school for the continuation of these adventures!

My proposal for the Réminiscences artwork.

I started a small consultation on our WhatsApp group, asking everyone to provide three elements that come to mind when thinking about our album: an emotion, a scene/situation, and an object.
My personal selection: hope – horizon – statue.

• Found Drawings

As you know, these tracks were created from my college demos, recorded in my student bedroom. I have an entire hard drive full of them! Even more, I have digitized lyrics and a few pencil sketches (very few).
I rediscovered two of them, and I remember thinking back then that I might turn them into cover art.

One drawing is of an embracing couple; I had even scribbled a phrase underneath: "you fill my winter heart with happiness." It’s very "me" from that era! I can barely face it now, haha.
The other drawing is of a woman/elf with wings, sitting on her knees in a field of feathers, as if they were stalks of wheat, with mountains in the background.

• Statues

I have always loved statues. The ones you find in parks. They are motionless and tranquil, slumbering there forever while vegetation takes over. It is a powerful symbol of the passage of time, and at the same time, they generally freeze a very specific emotion. In short, I love them.

• Transformation

I asked AI models to transform my drawing. I chose the one of the couple: the woman should be a statue representing hope, with the man embracing her. The statue could even have wings, or her arms reaching toward the sky.
Florent suggested a sunrise as the setting, which is a great idea. Lylou wants an artistic blur. Marine appreciates the statues. It shouldn't look too Gothic or dark because, even though everyone mentioned nostalgia as a recurring feeling throughout the album (and I agree with them), for me, what truly stands out in the music and runs through the subtext are the "élans" : the sudden surges of spirit. The songs have magnificent swells, and certain lyrics carry a powerful hope, calling for emancipation.

The statue represents these frozen feelings, this attachment, the past. Vegetation has colonized it, and times have changed. The man clings to it! But with the sunrise in the background and the sky above, everything around them is alive, calling him to leave it all behind. The statue itself is serene. Her wings could, symbolically, carry her far away. I found that idea very powerful.

We shall see how it turns out.

Between two mixing sessions for the Réminiscences project, a bit of livelooping fun.

I've decided to dedicate my July to mixing. I have two albums to mix: Réminiscences, the album with the students, 8 songs. And my new EP, 6 songs.

I'm starting with Réminiscences. We just finished recording the vocals, and the next and final collective session takes place in a few days. I therefore need a quick mix to determine which tracks might be missing, and then it'll be time for the final mix. I aim to finish by mid-July to then dedicate myself to the new EP.

Several significant challenges with Réminiscences: some tracks are demanding, like Renaissance, clearly the biggest challenge. It's long, ambitious, rich; the vocals are clearly what I'll spend the most time on through the entire album, there are many tracks and takes, and it's what the listener hears first.

To make it sound right, I'm not aiming for perfection but rather atmosphere and sonic immersion. I like it to sound good on headphones, like all my projects. I'm keeping a natural mix, to stay faithful to what we created together. All year I had in mind a sound reminiscent of Anathema's A Fine Day to Exit blended with Lana Del Rey (like 13 Beaches), but once you get to work, the music imposes its own mix and its own atmosphere. I always try to accompany that.

From one student who already heard some excerpts: "Oh yeah, that sounds pro!"

To work!

This isn't the final version. That one will be sung by Lylou, I'll lay down my voice on a verse, then Julie comes in on the chorus. What you hear here is my spontaneous version, the one I felt the sudden urge to sing this week, under the cool breeze of fans while the summer heat settled in heavily.

I didn't sing the chorus. I didn't feel the need to.

The lyrics came together in several stages. An initial seed by Adeline, Lylou and Marine, picked up and reworked by Lylou into a first verse. I wrote two more verses to complete it. Julie brought the final chorus. A true team effort !

The music is melancholic, somewhere between hope and despair.

A long way from the simple demo in my student room back in 2005.