Founded in the early 2000s, aswefall is a collaboration between two grizzled and accomplished music industry vets:
- Clement Vaché, a DJ and electronic music producer, known for being a pioneer of the French Rave scene, an organizer of the Borealis Montpellier Festival back in the 90s, and for being the resident DJ of the Kill the DJ parties at renowned Parisian club Le Pulp back in the 2000s. However, over the past few years, Vaché has become one of the most sought-after musical directors in luxury and fashion.
- Leo Helleden, a musican and producer, who has played in a number of bands including Camp Claude and Tristesse Contemporaine.
The duo’s full-length debut, 2005’s Bleed was released through Kill the DJ Records and features “Between Us,” a track used in ad campaigns for Air France. Since then, “Between Us” has amassed close to five million streams on Spotify.
Last month, I wrote about “La nuit s’évapore,” a brooding track that meshes elements of coldwave, goth and electro pop to create a club friendly banger built around glistening synth arpeggios. icily detached vocals and skittering boom bap paired with incredibly catchy hooks.
The French duo’s latest single “Mélancolie” is a remarkably autumnal track built around the sort of reverb-soaked shimmering guitar textures that seem to channel Slowdive, A Storm in Heaven and others paired with skittering beats, a supple and sinuous bass line and atmospheric synths paired with breathily delivered vocals. The result is a song that feels — and evokes — a melancholy fever dream and a wistful reminiscence of something or someone that we can’t ever get back.
“This new single entitled ‘Mélancolie’ summons the obsessions of T.S. Eliot, the floating guitar arpeggios and the soft pallor of a melancholic morning. All this in elevation as if flying over the smoking debris of a submerged world,” the duo explain.