Canadian-Haitian artist Laurie Torres (Tonal Union) announces debut album Après coup and shares new single ‘Lisière'
Après Coup melds on the spot improvisations and ambient jazz on lo-fi, self-liberating debut, out on February 21st 2025 via Tonal Union
Best New Music
NPR, All songs considered
"An absolutely beautiful record"
Tom Ravenscroft, BBC Radio 6 Music
Musician and composer Laurie Torres has announced that she will release her debut album, Après coup, on February 21st via Tonal Union. Following the album's precursor EP Correspondances, which NPR named a best new release, Torres has shared a new single, 'Lisière,' today. The track glides into focus with an on-the-spot piano melody, complemented by flute- and organ-like emulations and electric bass, creating a pulsating heartbeat.
Laurie Torres is a Canadian musician and composer raised in Montréal, Québec by Haitian parents. Since 2008, she has been a trusted stage and studio performer for Julia Jacklin, Pomme, and Land of Talk, as well as being a founding member of Folly & The Hunter, with whom she recorded four studio albums and toured Canada, Europe and the UK.
Growing up in South Shore, an eclectic love for music bloomed, traversing hip-hop (Nas, Missy Elliott), Motown, household rotations of 70s-80s Haitian music and pop before deep diving into local post-rock royalty Godspeed You! Black Emperor. As a child, Torres began classical piano lessons which continued into her teenage years, where she went on to pick up drums, playing high school bands and jazz ensembles, embedding herself in Montréal’s enriching community.
In 2023, Laurie shifted focus to work on her own creations, a process of making time - the will and the need becoming omnipresent. Drawing creative inspiration from contemporary artists like Tirzah, Gia Margaret, Valentina Magaletti, Tara Clerkin Trio and ML Buch, Après coup finds Torres intersecting at a pivotal moment where artists whose marginalised identities are at the forefront in creating a beautiful array of “other options”.
“Being othered and tokenised as a woman who plays music, as well as a queer and black person, takes a toll, while also positively feeding a strong urge to push and be seen.”
Centering around piano, drums and synthesisers with interweaving field recordings, Après coup follows the precursor ep Correspondances in the form of a sprawling 11-track album. Translating directly from French - afterwards, after the event - its title subliminally points at something deeper between the lines. Recorded in 2023 between tours in a small window of time where ‘normal’ life hadn't quite recommenced, Torres meticulously crafted her debut solo material in view of surrounding nature, all providing the perfect nourishment for long streams of improvisation. Built right up to the edge of a lake, Studio Wild in St-Zénon, Québec offered an unparalleled location and set up for her freeform creativity.
Instrumental music seemed like a natural response and evolution for Torres who had long basked in the world of “pop music” as she elaborates:
“I had an urge to use creativity as a sort of resting place, a place where things can unfold slowly and take time to reveal themselves. In other worlds words, I felt the need to make something slower, more elusive”
With her ‘pop’ past workings never far away, Laurie artfully drifts between uplifting and melancholic hues, never overbearing or undermining one another. She plants seeds throughout and only in consuming the album in its entirety do we make sense of its seriality, as new meanings unfold where repetition and subtleties produce increasingly complex meanings. The immediacy of Torres’ recorded takes doubled with minimal overdubs create a fiercely direct, intimate and unpolished lo-fi beauty. Après coup then is self-reflective, open and inclusive with Torres allowing herself to be fully seen. An album to be felt at close distance with unrivalled authenticity. This album stands as a testament to Laurie’s artistic evolution and serves as a beacon, inspiring her to continue nurturing her own creative pursuits and finding exhilarating freedom.
“Après coup, to me, signifies that moment of conscience in the aftermath, fundamentally an experience of time, the relationship between the before and after.”
Tracklist
1. Duvet
2. Lisière
3. Feux fuyants
4. Reflets
5. Intérieurs
6. Carnets
7. Clessidra
8. Point-virgule
9. Correspondances
10. Golden t-shirts
11. Exit
Laurie Torres Online:
