La Tène, Sourdure

La Tène and Sourdure play Cafe OTO on Saturday 26 September 2026 at 6:30 pm.

Ten years ago, La Tène released their first record as a trio with Cyril Bondi, d’Incise, and Alexis Degrenier. A decade, four albums, and multiple collaborations later, the group returns with Moreïne/Déclives, which marks a shift. True to its identity, La Tène continues to explore the space between tradition and experimentation, between hypnotic drone and repeated gestures, but this time they move onto new ground: the hurdy-gurdy, the group’s emblematic instrument since the beginning, disappears in favor of a stripped-down setup centered on two electronic percussion instruments and live dub work.

Alexis Degrenier, long associated with the sound of the hurdy-gurdy, can no longer play it. He is also a percussionist and composer. With his companions, he has built this transition into the core of the album, continuing a practice shaped by accidents, detours, and bifurcations.

Based in Thiers, France, Ernest Bergez, aka Sourdure, explores the boundaries of distant sound worlds, combining experimentation with a hand-crafted approach to traditional musical objects. Hybrid and exploratory, Sourdure's music reveals many facets: baroque inventions on a traditional canvas, carnivalesque odes, borrowings from Middle Eastern music, and sonic craft influenced by musique concrète. Combined with the acoustic rusticity of the violin or the dotar (a Central Asian lute), electronics reshape sound objects and alter perception.

Whether exalted or bittersweet, the vocals draw on classical Arabic, Turkish, and Persian music. The Occitan language of Auvergne takes center stage, using metaphor and polysemy to express the common, the intimate, and the sacred. The melody grows from the word, the poem gives birth to the song, in a form reminiscent of trobar, the art of the troubadours. A one-man orchestra, Sourdure performs solo from a universe of orchestras.