WL//WH Video Premiere: CŒUR JOIE remembers the cosmic wisdom of “Dimi l’étoile”

Video Premiere Cœur-joie

Cœur-joie started in 2021 as the Paris-based Indie Pop solo project of Martin Martin Meilhan-Bordes under his alter ego Marti Martinski, joined a year later by former bandmates from Bootchy Temple and Sex Sux, Paul Rannaud, Milia Colombani, and Adrien Berthe. The 4-piece craft a distinctive eclectic mix, dubbed “Post-Twee Pop” of Jangly guitars, French vocals, and delicate poetry filled with metaphors, epitomized by the emotional track “Dimi l’étoile | Dimi the Star” taken from last February’s debut 7-track EP “Allumettes au bout des îles”, via Hidden Bay Records and Melotron Recordings, together with a DIY vintage family video release, WL//WH is pleased to Premiere.

So about the clip, it was made with family videos taken with a Sony camcorder in the late 90s. It’s a whole collection of tapes that had been lying around at my grandmother’s house for a while and that I recently had scanned. It’s funny to see yourself as a little child, it’s quite hard to make the connection between the person you see on the screen and the one you have become now. From a period that is vague, or that could not even have existed, if we only refer to our memories, we move on to something very concrete, almost indubitable. Something that imposes itself in fact, and which is quite terrifying in its materiality. There is a pleasure in discovering these videos, but which is accompanied by real trouble, and I may have tried to reflect this ambiguity a little in the clip.

A sentimental aural memoir winds the ringing strummed dread of urgent, meandering, wistful guitar melodies with comforting lithe bass pulses, and perky drum beats, swathed in stirring emotive violin strings to form swirling cinematic atmospheres of harsh, ecstatic distortions and wailing, haunted gusts around helpless, angsty male vocals infusing restrained sadness and reluctant joy into a beautiful ghostly poem about a grandmother’s mystical wisdom and nurturing love.

Intimate found home movies circa the 1990s flow from a well of lost dreams to build nostalgia, comfort, and melancholy. Panoramic seashores, ferry rides, and lots of windswept smiles invite the viewer to travel back in time to a place where worldly disfigurements and indoctrinated beliefs have not yet corrupted an endless capacity for trust. A familiar silhouette set against an intoxicating backdrop of glistening waves and piles of seashells brings bittersweet tears to the mind’s eye, stimulating archetypal powers whilst harnessing disconnected solace from an eternal source of ancestral insight.

Cœur-joie‘s first EP “Allumettes au bout des îles”, is out now through Hidden Bay Records (ltd. Cassette) and Melotron Recordings (ltd. CD).

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