French duo Lovataraxx share ‘Tilda Vaast,’ taken from the upcoming ‘Sophomore,’ out April 5th, 2024 via German label Cold Transmission.

‘Tilda Vaast’ is the first single off ‘Sophomore,’ the new album by French cold wave and minimal synth duo Lovataraxx.

“The song was created a couple of years ago, while I was thinking about my grandmother, after her death,” comments Julien from the band. “My grandmother, Mathilde, was deeply romantic, she was all the time reading soapy Harlequin romances. Sometimes, when she was very old, she didn’t remember that she already read one of those novels so she started over. Sometimes she also pretended that she was reading, in order to be left alone, because she didn’t want to talk. And I noticed: “Gran, you’re holding your book upside down! What are you thinking about?” And we were all laughing, but she never told us what was on her mind. Mathilde left Algeria before she was forty years old, and settled with the whole family in a grey and industrial town. I guess it was really hard at the beginning. But I feel like, in her thoughts, year after year, she was still over there: a young and free lady walking on the seaside. When she was looking at me, I had the impression that her eyes were deep and vast like the Mediterranean Sea. I proposed once or two times to go all together back in Algeria, but she wouldn’t go. She spent her old age locked away indoors. Whereas, when she was young, she was always outside. Once, after her death, I grabbed a couple of pictures of her, back to the time when she was living abroad , by the sea. And I realized that I hardly knew anything about that person in the pictures. So I gathered a couple of elements in my mind, and this is the story of Tilda Vaast.”

The single is accompanied by a music video directed and produced by Ramataupia featuring actress Ayris Taban.

A single being is missing and everything is forlorn. The starting point of the track and video Tilda Vaast was the following question: How tall is something that we call “vast”. How can we measure something that seems unlimited, like a sea? It seems sometimes easier to stay stuck in a tangled stream of thoughts, than to confide directly to someone. Tilda Vaast is dedicated to people that feel unable to speak frankly to anybody except themselves. Sometimes, it seems easier to lock oneself up in a reassuring past, than facing today’s realities. Tilda Vaast could be the name of a character who is always overseas everywhere. How can we preserve our intimacy, when we’re stuck in a public space? While facing solitude or grief, we wish that we could make the whole world disappear around us. Tilda Vaast feels out of place during her stay in the city of Marseille and she would like to blur all the lines. She nurtures a deep resentment and would like to teleport or dissolve herself out of space and time.

After their critically acclaimed album ‘Hébéphrénie’ which was released in 2020, ‘Sophomore’ is a new step on the band’s trajectory, influenced by synthetics musics, 80’s or 90’s horror and SF movie soundtracks. A resolutely fairy, modern and personal record that can be pre-ordered now at the following link.

Lovataraxx will be on tour in April, May, June and July to promote the album live on stage.
April 12 — Lyon, FR — Grrrnd Zero (Release Party)
April 13 — Nevers, FR — No Way Asso
April 14 — Amiens, FR — L’accueil Froid
April 15 — Dunquerke, FR — TBA
April 16 — Calais, FR — No Way Out
April 17 — Lille, FR — La Malterie
April 18 — Delft, NL — De Koornbeurs
April 19 — Dordrecht, NL — Door
April 20 — Bruxelles, BE — Magasin 4
April 22 — Hamburg, DE — Hafenklang
April 25 — Hannover, DE — Subkultur
April 26 — Leipzig, DE — Gieszer Fest
April 27 — Frankfurt, DE — ONO2 (Release Party Cold Transmission)
May 17 — Torino, IT — Radio Black Out
May 18 — Roma, IT — Fanfulla
June 1 — Orléns, FR — l’Astrolabe
July 6 — Gent, BE — Kinky Star
July 13 — Munich, DE — Katzenclub