Coups de Foudre brings together three works that Stéphane Roy composed between 2022 and 2024 in his studio in Brossard, Québec, all of them conceived in multichannel versions and mixed here in stereo. Roy describes them as three separate musical universes: war, a dreamlike fauna, and the experience of time.

Après, les cendres (2023), for 4-channel fixed medium, draws on two poems from Pour les âmes by the Québécois writer Paul-Marie Lapointe: ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile), with its bomber resting beside the sleeper, and Nous sommes installés sous le tonnerre…. Three dreamlike sections of furtive sounds and insistent melodies lead to incandescente fureur, driven by a martial motif, and the piece ends in the ashes of war. It premiered at L’Espace du son in Brussels in 2023 and received an honourable mention at Musica Nova in Prague.

Bestiaire à hauteur d’oreille (2022, 24), commissioned by Productions Totem contemporain, is written for the Babel table, a polyphonic instrument invented and played by Jean-François Laporte, who premiered it in Turin in 2022. Its roars, growls and bird-like warbles make up an imaginary bestiary. Avec le temps… (2022, 24), a 5.1 suite of nine miniatures, deals with time as it is felt, contracting and dilating, held together by an echo figure that recurs throughout. In concert the miniatures can be played in a different order each time; a group of three of them received an honourable mention in the 12th Musicworks contest.

Born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in 1959, Roy holds a doctorate in electroacoustic composition and a PhD in musicology from the Université de Montréal. His book on the analysis of electroacoustic music won the Prix Opus in 2003-04, and his album L’inaudible won a Prix Opus in 2019-20.

CD-R edition in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 25198, 2025.