Chantal Michelle

Chantal Michelle

Broken to Echoes

Somewhere Between Tapes

Using an array of acoustic and electronic instruments alongside field recordings, Chantal Michelle conducts an anxious ensemble of sounds, inviting comparison to Lamin Fofana or Rachika Nayar. Her third solo album, 'Broken to Echoes' is Chantal Michelle's attempt to show how beauty can exist even as reality itself seems to disintegrate. She figures this out by offsetting traditionally pretty elements like the soaring choral vocals on opening track 'Departure of Light' with more unsettling instrumentation. 'Breathing Water' appears to grow from feedback and white noise, and vocals from Eliana Glass here sit awkwardly in the empty space, joined eventually by doomy strings and cavernous reverb. On 'Celestia', Chantal matches black metal-adjacent nursery rhyme synths with oscillating rainfall and distant woodwind blasts, playing up the album's theatricality. But she's keen not to let anything get too distracting - with any darkness there's usually light, and vice versa. 'Blue in Blue' is as refreshing as a fairy fountain in a Zelda game, and while 'Opening' is as dark as anything we've heard from Lustmord recently, the album's title track is comparatively sunny.