LAURIE TORRES - Après coup
On the spot improvs, experimental jazz and ambient coalesce on lo-fi, self-liberating debut
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 post-rock local 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 marginalized identities are at the forefront in creating a beautiful array of “other options”.
“Being othered and tokenized 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 synthesizer 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”
Laurie ascends to a ‘flow state’ not dissimilar to the meditative tones of Nala Sinephro and the repeating figures of Duval Timothy. ‘Duvet’ emerges with a wide-open organ drone (Hammond B3) and stays still throughout, setting a welcoming mood. The joyful, velvety piano melodies begin to ring out before tentatively locking into a precise phrase around analogue delays that create a “breathing” effect. ‘Feux fuyants’ descends into otherworldly terrain with a burst of energy as her patterned drumming interlocks with a responding piano line fed through glitchy delays as the track folds in on itself. We return to serenity with ‘Reflets’, which moves between left and right hand piano phrases on top of an arpeggiating Farfisa synth that provides the glue and airiness. Field recordings embellish the album’s inner walls - all extracted directly from the location. Scraping, walking, singing into the air and the wind all make up its human, tangible fabric. On ‘Intérieurs’, she embraces the gifts and flaws of improvisation, leaving in an imprinted audible sigh, finding a raw beauty in the natural performance. ‘Clessidra’ insistently drives the album forwards with percussive brass cowbell tappings (one used for herds) matched with repeating piano patterns that sway in and out of sync with a surreal chorus of staggered vocal layerings. ‘Point-Virgule’ offers a delightful breathing moment ahead of ‘Correspondances’, a close relative to ‘Duvet’ stemming from a similar theme and progression. As we arrive at ‘Exit’ the pace steadies to where the piano and drums exist independently of one another, yet meeting on another latitude as if signalling the end of a conversation.
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"
