Clear vinyl LP, edition of 100 copies. The first ever vinyl pressing of French singer and instrumentalist Elizabeth Vogler’s sensational second album, issued by Holidays Records. Capturing the electroacoustic composer and improvisor in situ in a church in South-West France, Au Nom Deus Asos weaves a constrained palette of harmonium and voice into six shimmering songs that blur the boundaries between experimental approaches and ancient folk forms, a timeless beauty that moves beyond the realm of words.
Experimental music has always had a complex relationship with the past: it forges forward, fracturing itself from historical tropes and norms, while seeking what is fundamentally human in organized sound. In the 20th century this led composers like Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley and La Monte Young toward ancient traditions from cultures other than their own. More recently, younger artists have begun mining the traditions of their own cultures and geographies, from Sarah Davachi and Kali Malone’s uses of early and Baroque tuning systems to a constellation of artists (Roxane Métayer, Lise Barkas, Delphine Dora, Luster) who intertwine the indigenous folk traditions of Europe with experimental approaches. Elizabeth Vogler is one of the most engaging artists in this latter grouping.
Hailing from Southern France and trained in musicology and electroacoustic composition, for more than a decade Vogler has carved out a unique territory of her own: singing in polyphonic ensembles, creating electroacoustic works centered on voice and drones (choir-like layers, long tones, electronics, field recordings and textures, “somewhere between imagined traditional song and unstable electronic ritual”), improvising, and increasingly making experimental music that veers toward traditional folk, drawing on Bulgarian vocal techniques and the Occitan traditions of Béarn, where she grew up.
Drawing on a previous performance in the same space, she recorded Au Nom Deus Asos in the church of Lescun, a village in the Pyrénées not far from the Spanish border, with her powerful and deeply emotive voice, singing in a number of distinct dialects, and harmonium alone. Imbued with the natural reverberance of the church, voice and long tones reveal ancient musical conversations across the French and Spanish borders, with unexpected, subtle pop sensibilities: sounds that have been “transformed, decomposed and rebuilt”, carrying “fragments of memory, tradition and place.” Much like the work of Sarah Davachi or Lise Barkas, it harnesses the power and humanity of ancient music within quietly radical hybrid forms that keep the spirit of experimental music in the absence of its explicit signifiers.
First released as a small cassette edition by the Berlin-based Billo in 2025. Clear vinyl LP, edition of 100 copies, with full color photos by Albane Barrau, an insert and a booklet with lyrics.
