Avant-pop / emo indie / lo-fi chamber

The seven songs on Frater Crater follow one another like so many places whose lighting varies from blinding halogen to disquieting darkness, without passing through the ideal sunshine. While the band’s musicians remain the same – vibraphone, guitar, keyboards, drums and bass – the instrumentation has been augmented to support Antoine Mermet’s lead vocals: accordion and synthesizers have been added, serving as levers for the deployment of intriguing soundscapes. If every now and then a flood begins, the phenomenon stops before the water reaches the nostrils: drowning is still prevented, but clothes are weighed down. In other words, music that’s both innovative and accessible, capable of breaking the hearts of lovers of the melodic obvious as well as those of the avant-garde: sophisticated arrangements and complex structures leap out at you as much as irresistibly effective melodic discoveries. The whole thing sounds dusty but lush, 100% emo and immature: the lyrics ask unanswered questions, detail hours of immobility and desires for superpowers, while the music moves back and forth between emptiness and overflow.

Frater Crater is thus the follow-up to Pierrefilant, a debut group album recorded in 48 hours and released in 2018, which had followed the release of Building Lampshades, a solo synth pop EP in the form of a sketchbook, released in 2016. It is carried by a tight band, neither chamber ensemble nor rock band, or all of the above. It features key musicians from Lyon’s innovative music scene, all of whom have in common a preference for creativity over rule-following.

When he’s not writing sad songs, Antoine plays the saxophone and sings in CHROMB! and explores in Vocoder or Bouche Amplifiée. And when he’s not making music, he’s acting for Alice Laloy or Guillaume Bailliart, dancing for Nitsan Margaliot, performing for Nile Koetting, Megan Cope, collaborating on exhibitions and performances by Tiphaine Calmettes or showing his own visual work. Consistency and specialization are clearly not his strong points. Saint Sadrill is his personal project, a group he formed in 2015 by inviting five musicians and friends who have long since abandoned devotion to a precise aesthetic, preferring openness and exploration.