Sophia Djebel Rose : Sécheresse
Every sound on Sécheresse is made by Sophia Djebel Rose. Vocals, guitar, modular synth, harmonium and “other sounds,” as stated in the credits, are all the product and labor of the French/Moroccan singer/songwriter, whose stark, solitary recordings share more in common with, say, Grouper than Prince. Her haunted minimalism thrives on the suggestion of menace rather than explosive acts of musical turbulence, but when it arises it’s impossible to ignore. “Les Noyés” (the drowned), the album’s closing track, is one such moment, an eight-minute dirge of disorientation and violence, periodically breaking into stormy strums of distorted guitar, and reaching a terrifying climax with her scream of “au fond de mon sac une lame froide et tranchante/C’est qu’il me faut bien parer a toute éventualité” (“At the bottom of my bag, a cold, sharp blade. I need to be prepared for any eventuality.”).
Sécheresse is saturated with images and suggestions of danger and violence, streaked with looming shadows and a sense that it could be consumed by the darkness at any moment. Rose uses the tools at her disposal sparingly, be it the eerie layers of her own unaccompanied, echoing voice in the chilling opener “Au verger,” its disorienting swirl a kind of subtle escalation of madness, the spectral drones that form a mist beneath her vocals in “L’homme au costume doré,” or the harrowing sprials of guitar on “Les Amandiers,” which channels the malevolent apparitions of Nico’s The Marble Index.
At the center of Sécheresse are two sprawling monoliths that anchor the album in hypnotic, violent beauty. The title track is the lengthier yet more restrained of the two, breathtaking in its minimalist evocation of desolate landscapes—its opening couplet translates to “I dwell in deserted paths and the shadows of graves.” But the album’s most jaw-dropping peak is Rose’s dark and entrancing interpretation of “Blanche Biche,” a nine-minute sprawl of a centuries-old French folk ballad. A medieval folk song about a girl who transforms into a white deer and is then hunted by her brother and served to her family as dinner, the dirge escalates into some of the heaviest and most turbulent sounds here, roiling with a gnashing intensity.
In a statement accompanying the album, Sophia Djebel Rose dedicates it to “all the women, standing on the borderline, holding a blade against their breast,” as she is depicted on the record’s artwork. And in a recent interview, she said that “words are weapons.” The guitar she strums, the cry from deep within, and the blade in her bag are one and the same—tools of creation, methods of survival and conduits for something otherworldly.
Label: WV Sorcerer
Year: 2025
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