Lucie Antunes's second album is a big, sprawling thing that moves between percussion-driven art pop and hushed, almost liturgical passages. She plays drums, vibraphone, synths, piano, and sings, but the record is co-produced with Canblaster, who adds modular synths and real-time processing to most tracks. The result is something that feels both live and heavily sculpted, with voices and instruments folding into each other.
The whole thing is built around a libretto by poet Laura Vazquez, and the tracklist is dotted with "Centuple du réel" interludes where different actors speak her words. There are proper songs too: "There's a love" with Halo Maud, "I don't need" with Louisahhh, and a couple of pieces with photographer Wolfgang Tillmans on vocals. The horn and bassoon parts add a chamber music feel that cuts against the electronic processing. It comes from Paris, out on vinyl and CD, and it's the kind of record you might need to sit with for a while. Not everything hits immediately, but the best moments, the choir on the title track, the way "Mushrooms" builds from trumpet and vibraphone, are genuinely strange and worth the patience.
