"Drowned by Locals hits it out of the park again with another deliciously chaotic release of jumbly rumbly sound collages. Lucien Balconi (Strasbourg, France) serves up a hectic but refined blend of boisterous samples, complex beats, and intriguing melodies featuring hand-crafted instruments. Influences span nature field recordings, videogame soundtracks, Sonidero culture, cartoons, and Southern trap. Check it out."

- HYPRK, KZSU Radio - Stanford University -

"Lucien Balconi’s Drowned By Locals debut blurs the lines between PS1-era video games and real-world environments.

‘SAW THE FEELING IN THE HEART OF THINGS’ is hyperreal and otherworldly in its attempt to bridge virtual and non-virtual realities. It’s natural phenomena made synthetic; drowsy nostalgia.

Our premiere, ‘GERRIS’, comes windswept and kaleidoscopic, placing the listener in an off-kilter world of digital detritus and dreamy, melancholic introspection."

- IF-ONLY MAG -

"The album artwork reproduces the strands woven through the album’s emotional core. The hazy image has the soft, pliant edges of a memory. You’re delivered to a dappled glade in the Legend of Zelda game that you played as a child, a glowing 16-bit respite from danger. And danger is present - just as darkness circles the sunkissed lakeside, threatening noises rattle at the periphery of even the most vulnerable, blissed-out tracks. Machines gurgle with hydraulic glee, swords ring out as they are unsheathed, and indistinct voices mutter as they stomp just past your bedroom door.

Balconi’s use of tension is masterful - glowing chords ripple outwards, and technicolour harmonies shiver before drifting leftwards to a unsettling discordance. Opening track RIDEAU PERLE is a defining statement. Its wrought melancholy and driving arrangement drop you off at an entirely different location from where you started. Deft percussion, such as on DAME DE PIQUE, drags you along by the scruff off the neck for a hyperreal Bildungsroman. When a gruff narrator calls for the layers of glistening and grinding noise to drop out, just a pearlescent melody remains. It’s a deep breath within a deep breath."

- Bertie Coyle -


Lucien Balconi is a musician based in the east of France. Inspired by the magnificent phenomena of nature, the morning wind that caresses our faces, the end of the day light filtered between the branches of the trees, he composes delicate, sensitive music, charged with emotions, where sometimes dissonant sounds inspire the ambiguity of sensations between fear and appeasement, melancholy and energy.

In addition to sound, he developed a great affinity for woodworking and the manufacture of musical instruments, which he invested in during live performances.

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Original text:
Je me baladais par les champs lumineux et j'arrive maintenant au bout de la digue d'influences. Le feu rougi diffuse son sang dans le ciel. Les brins d'herbes se collent, amidonnés et visqueux.
Au sol, quelques gravats de jeux vidéo jonchent le pavé irrégulier ; parure d'aluminium habillée de soleil.

Proche du rivage, l'eau fraîche au goût de gazole forme de petits tourbillons aux accords graves; sourdes harmonies ravagées par le métal rouillé. Les échantillons s'encrassent, s'imbibent d'une liqueur sucrée. Un clocher sonne trois ou quatre notes et la fête foraine, de l'autre côté, complète la mélodie.

Là-bas au loin, les lumières tournoient et je danse, et je pétune.
Si le vent ne souffle plus, les braises rougissent encore.
Si je ne vous avais rencontré Elysia, je me serais tu comme l'eau sombre des lacs.
Encore, rappelez-moi les crépuscules, les fins de journées endormies.

Ensuite, après un instant où la nature m'a semblé figée, je me suis enfoncé dans la terre molle, comme un asticot, sous une route de cordes encore bouillantes. La lune tiède éclaire de reflets l'asphalte doré. Une brume orangée se lève au-dessus, fauchée par la déchirure des moteurs. Les autos hurlent des graves qui apaisent mon corps flouté de vibrations sauvages.

Assoupi dans l'alcôve ténébreuse, finalement, je m'éveille au matin scintillant, lorsque les ombres de la nuit ne chantent plus.

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