It is one of the notable French-speaking albums of the fall. With People Pass, Time Remains, the Belgian group Glauque reshapes rap and techno with a scalpel. Some of their punchlines make their way into playlists, like “I see the reflection of my time in front of my turned off screen (…) Drinking glasses two by two like Gérard Depardieu in pewter glasses”.

This piece, Plan large, evokes “the relationship with oneself in the relationship with the other”, explains the singer Louis Lemage, met by AFP in Paris for a launch evening in a small room with walls of raw concrete, material in resonance with their music and their texts. “We’re all trying to get rid of that but we’re all our own community managers. We manage our own image for sometimes ridiculous things: are you 100% yourself with what you show on the screens? develops the youngest member, 25 years old, of this quartet from Namur. The oldest of the group, aged 32, is his big brother, Lucas.

Siblings in music are never trivial. Things can go well, like Sparks’ brothers or Ibeyi’s sisters, or turn sour in the case of Oasis or the Kinks. The story has more salt in Glauque. “We’re not very close in the family but I met my brother through music when I was 18-19: before that, he left home to study when I was 10” , confides Louis. Lucas is still a piano teacher alongside the group, which appeared in 2018 and which therefore released its first album in mid-September.

“He was the only person I knew who played music. When I wanted him to listen to mine, he told me: “I don’t have time” (laughs), but gave me the contact of Aadriejan Montens, with whom I started playing” . However, Lucas, as well as his roommate, Baptiste Lo Manto, also a musician, will eventually listen and join the pair. Glaucus was born.

Birth is discussed in the song Ranc, evoking a subject rarely addressed in song: the refusal to be a father (or mother) despite social injunctions. “The flesh of my flesh, I hide this hell from you, you will never be born,” intones the singer.

The European public first discovered Glauque’s radicalism on stage, as in October 2019 at the pioneering MaMA festival in Paris, a meeting point for music industry professionals. “The Belgian group takes place where the dirty makes the beautiful,” presented the organizers of the Parisian festival at the time. It’s always a slap on stage. Pierre Pauly, programmer of the Francofolies de La Rochelle, where Glauque visited this summer, speaks to AFP of a group of “rare intensity”.

In addition to Belgium, France and Switzerland, the group will also tour in Germany at the end of the year. The country, which has a real club culture, quickly adopted them. “There are young people but also people in their sixties, very respectful,” says Louis, delighted.