KEXP at Trans Musicales: Le Groupe Obscur

Today, we continue sharing our discoveries from the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, where last December we captured twelve exclusive sessions. We’re sharing with you one unique session per week, and you can watch all the previously released ones here. This week’s feature is of Le Groupe Obscur.

DJ Morgan says of the band:

As we found out last year during our time at Trans Musicales, Rennes has a tradition of being interested in the English music scene since the region of Brittany is so close to the UK that historically they could pick up the BBC from their radios. Le Groupe Obscur is definitely influenced by the UK music scene, particularly the bands on the 4AD label. They are very reminiscent of Cocteau Twins, with an awesome 1980s dream pop sound. They have even invented their own language (also reminiscent of Cocteau’s Elizabeth Fraser often singing in gibberish) of between 300-500 words, including conjugated verbs, called The Obscurian (L’Obscurien) which they have started incorporating into their songs. Not only do they have strong songwriting and vocals, but they have created an aesthetic with cool costumes and makeup, and even handmade merch items like tarot cards, cloth CD bags, and pins. They currently only have a few songs on Bandcamp at the moment but have an album's worth of songs in the can that they are working to get recorded and released in the near future. I’m really looking forward to the release of this session!