Laurent Bardainne - Prologue Laurent Bardainne

With its sunny pop, hypnotic groove and elegant synth-rock, French saxophonist, keyboardist and composer Laurent Bardainne brings together the Poni Hoax team featuring Pupajim & Melissa Weikart on Prologue EP.

Laurent Bardainne's eclectic musical career includes Poni Hoax (the best French rock band of its generation), Limousine (five albums of cinematic jazz between 2005 and 2023), via Lost (with Camelia Jordana) and Tigre d'Eau Douce with its comforting saxophone.

Much like its iconoclastic and delightfully offbeat cover, created by one of the rising figures of the comic book scene, Salome Lahoche, Bardainne shares a taste for sidestepping norms, fertile ambiguity, and joyfully blurred boundaries.

For this new recording, made in Belleville at Fred Soulard's studio, he is joined by Pupajim (of French soundsystem crew Stand High Patrol) and the remarkable Melissa Weikart on vocals - "a virtuoso jazz musician I discovered at a festival, who doesn't really like labels, a fan of indie, free jazz, and UK garage." On instruments, it's none other than the full lineup of Poni Hoax. A first for Vincent Taeger, Nicolas Villebrun, and Arnaud Roulin, all reunited for the first time since the passing of Nicolas Ker in 2021:

"When we met again in the studio to record This Is Your Song, we all understood that the song was dedicated to him," Bardainne recalls, visibly moved.

And yet, even if the musical telepathy between the band members remains intact, this new EP is anything but a simple Poni Hoax retread. You can hear vocal influences ranging from Suzanne Vega to LCD Soundsystem in the electronic treatments, and even Sonic Youth in the rock-pop blend.

Available on 180g black vinyl with picture sleeve.