Bild: Jean Francois ROBERT

After a first lap in 2018 – six titles in French and Spanish, including the magnetic “Le Monde s’est dédoublé “( the world has split) – Clara YSÉ steps forward into the spotlight, at full power, with Oceano Nox, a very audacious first album, written and composed by her, co-produced with Ambroise Willaume (Sage), mixed by Renaud Letang (Feist) and carried by numerous musicians, electronic textures and a choir in tune.

Since childhood, she has played and sung, a violin in her hands then educated in singing at eight years old, before tracing a parallel path towards writing and singing.

For a long time, Clara YSÉ let music run free, without capturing it in a studio, organizing parties that ended in musical improvisations, at dawn. The choirs of “Pyromanes” or “Souveraines” come from there, voices that have always accompanied her, and some of the musicians – duduk, brass or cello players – have also experienced these midnight sharings.

This first album is foremost one of a desirer, she says. She likes innovators, from Rosalia to Björk via Kendrick Lamar, singers who combine fragility and strength like Lole Montoya, Janis Joplin, Mercedes Sosa, Nina Hagen.

She confronts her voice with an innovative modernity, playing as much with her producers to mix synths with iridescent textures, electronic rhythms borrowed from reggaeton, as to appropriate certain codes of Greek rebetiko.

Clara YSÉ is, from the outset, a voice. A voice that stirs up sand, crosses fire, pierces the night, crosses continents of feelings as a sovereign.

Vulnerable but powerful, solid and yet elusive, Clara YSÉ enters French song with the brilliance of the great conquerors.