Sėlēnę

‘Rebel, rebel’, sang Bowie to the strains of white funk. Add two ‘l ’s and you’ve reached a different kind of realm. One where the rebellious music of Sėlēnę is king, floating on multiple worlds, powerful and psychedelic. Groove? Yes. Straight and incorruptible. Energy? Yes. Electric and explosive. Words? Yes, words. Dreamlike and surreal. Sėlēnę is a blend of character(s). Forged in La Réunion. First as a solo act in 2018, then as a dual-culture duo in 2022, and finally as a multi-faceted trio today. Cellist Mélanie Badal is at the origin of this music, in which the classical repertoire is joyously shaken up by accents of electro-acoustic music, while guitarist and alchemist Blaise Cadenet has slipped into the project’s volutes and gildings. Mahesh Vingataredy, a drummer and percussionist from Intense Island, has a wealth of experience to draw on in the trio’s rich history. The trio is new to the scene, but well-versed in the art of creating a space and a narrative through sound. Introspection rubs shoulders with the murmurings of the world, the reckless merges with the fragile, the frontal vigour of effects with the nostalgia of melodies, played or sung.

Selene’s music soothes these wounds, creating tumultuous islets, little zones to defend. ‘Les vagues enfermées s’évaporent, et tu trembles’, we read in the lyrics of a track like Des Versets. But this trembling is that of secret victories. The ones we erect as temporary banners. Sėlēnę is the kind of sensitive trio where the whole world becomes a nation, where freedom guides the musical gesture, where poetry erases borders. In cadence.