For a decade now, Swiss outfit L’Eclair have been toying with various threads of jazz-fusion, funk, and neo-psych on an ever-shifting discography revolving around a playful sense of instrumental experimentation. Yet perhaps their biggest departure yet arrives the year after their Cloud Drifter LP, which inspired them to explore a more immediate sound—something faster-paced, aggressive rather than laidback. The result was “Excelsior” and the five-track Echo EP that would follow.
“Post album release, we were motivated to push toward a new sound—something sharper and more direct, finally bringing the raw, wild energy of our live shows together with our modern approach to production,” brothers Stef and Yavor Lilov of the chapter that commenced immediately upon the last one’s closure. “That’s how ‘Excelsior’ was born. It’s the fastest L’Eclair song to date and pays homage to a main influence of ours: dub music. We took the classic stepper rhythm and made it our own, layering in 303s, fuzzed-out guitars, and a cinematic bridge that keeps building and shifting until the very end. For us, the track feels like a manifesto: L’Eclair is back, with a new sound built to hit harder, travel further, and fill bigger rooms.”
The new track feels equally inspired by the tempo of jungle and other rapid-paced outsider electronic sounds, while maintaining the core psychedelia that’s been a through-line for the band since the beginning. Check out the results below, and anticipate the release of Echo on November 6 via Innovative Leisure.
