

LโEclair
Growing up in Bulgaria in the late 1990s, brothers Stef and Yavor Lilov were shaped in a myriad of unseen ways by the centuries-old folk music that filtered through their daily lives. It helped mold their creative spirit and inspired them to begin making noise together at a young age, and that unique and intuitive creative alchemy has been a foundation of guitarist/keyboardist Stef and drummer Yavorโs band LโEclair since they formed it in their adopted home of Switzerland a decade ago.
After spending the past two years meticulously crafting Cloud Drifter, their fourth album and debut for revered U.S. label Innovative Leisure, LโEclair is for the first time now led by the Lilov siblings. The result is an album seamlessly melding modernity with nostalgia and played with a robotic tightness that remains deeply human. Indeed, Cloud Drifter will move the body as much as it does the brain.
โWe really wanted to finally be able to capture in the studio the feeling that people had listening to us live,โ says Yavor. โPart of that involved really taking the time to polish the music between recording and mixing. Can we make this more impactful? How can we make it more attention-grabbing? Putting in that work and really dissecting the production helped us achieve the sonic result we were looking for.โ
LโEclair has built an international fanbase thanks to its impressive command of rhythm, dynamics and electro/acoustic alchemy, which has nodded equally to vocal-free titans such as Can and Tortoise, expansive, spacey and blissed-out jams ((2021โs Confusions) and more stripped-down, feel-good and genre-jumping destinations (the 2018 debut Polymood). Two live sessions for KEXP have accumulated nearly 900,000 views combined, beaming LโEclair onto the playlists of adventurous listeners around the world.
And although Cloud Drifter reverberates with heavy, party-starting grooves (โVertigoโ), electrifying future club anthems (โMEMPHISโ) and even trap-inspired beats (โNova Umbraโ), its true revelations come from LโEclairโs first-ever use of vocals, which are performed in a dizzying variety of styles by such guests as Pink Siifu, Gelli Haha, Phoebe Coco, Girl Named GOLDEN, A Ghost Column and Forest Law. The title track is also the maiden appearance of new LโEclair member and singer/keyboardist Inรจs Mouzoune, whose group Roshรขni is signed to Stone Pixels, the The Orchard-distributed label co-founded by Julien Fawaz & the Lilovs.
โThat was a special song in the process, with the three of us in the studio, finding the melody together,โ Yavor recalls. โIt wasnโt like, we send the instrumental, you bring the melody and then weโll see. It was collective work towards choosing the right ingredients.โ
Elsewhere, former tourmate Girl Named GOLDEN sidesteps her familiar lo-fi indie pop sound to brings forth a captivating vocal atop the hypnotic groove of the aptly named โThe Glitch,โ while Phoebe Cocoโs wordless intonations greatly heighten the ethereal ballad โOcean Mind.โ Forest Lawโs sweet, heartfelt singing conjures the wistful vibe of a beach-adjacent drive with the top down on โNostalgia,โ while Gelli Hannaโs confident utterances (โsomethingโs up with youโ / โheaven can wait, should you be lateโ) help propel โRun,โ the demo of which started in Afro-electronic/Nyege Nyege Tapes territory before morphing into something much more upbeat and crunchy.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Pink Siifuโs dexterous flow on โReplica M001โ unlocks a brave new sonic world previously unvisited in LโEclairโs prior work.
โIt was very important that the first hip-hop song LโEclair releases didnโt contain a loop,โ Stef says in reference to Siifuโs performance, which is almost on a jazz level in terms of its complexity. โIt was more about using what Siifu does best, which is rapping on a drumless beat with timeless instruments. What you hear is a freestyle. He used his voice as an instrument and you see the full spectrum of his abilities. Thatโs what we wanted of every guest โ to push them where theyโre not used to.โ
The Lilovs also pushed themselves to deepen the material by recording a string quartet, a choir and a harpist at London contemporary jazz hub Total Refreshment Centre, whose like-minded artists-in-residence provided an extra, intangible burst of inspiration (acclaimed saxophonist/composer Alabaster DePlume happened to be tracking his own session there at the same time and hung out with LโEclair while listening to the playback).
โWe were really, really proud of actually seeing our music written out as a score and executed with a string quartet,โ says Stef, who enlisted longtime friend Arthur Sajas (HAHA Sound Collective) to write the arrangement. โI know some of us cried.โ The final touches came from Electric Lady Studio mix engineer Matt Scatchell (Adele, James Blake), of whose work Yavor says, โit was a completely new experience for me as a producer and musician to hear something we did as equal to artists or songs that Iโve admired for a lot of years.โ
Crystallizing Cloud Drifterโs musical voyage is Melissa Santamariaโs artwork, which depicts an alien world enriched by a living, flower-like structure that may or may not also serve as an interdimensional portal. Says Yavor, โThis album is a trip to unknown territories, but it all goes back to what is close to us: what is human, and what brings us back to reality?โ
โWhen Stef and I began playing music, we did it with our ears and without writing. It always started with the emotion. We are always in search of the tools to make those emotions stronger. LโEclair wants to make you dance and cry, and this album is a great example of that,โ he continues. โFor me, thatโs what LโEclair is about.โ