Arandel to Release COSMOGONIES DU SILENCE Album

French composer and producer Arandel has announced a new album, Cosmogonies du Silence, set for release on January 22nd on InFiné. The album's debut single, 'L'Heure du Loup,' is out now, accompanied by an animated music video directed by Marine Dard.

'Because music may also be what gives birth to the silence that follows it. Silence, like an inhabited absence. Haunted by the memory of music. Silence as a metaphor for what has been, and what continues to live with us. Absence turning into presence. Silence as a ghost,' Arandel said.

The album features guest appearances by Ben Shemie (Suuns), Meryem Aboulouafa, Douglas Dare, and Félix Maritaud.

Following on from his celebrated InBach albums, Arandel extends what the release describes as the dream that has haunted electronic music since its occult origins with the announcement of Cosmogonies du Silence.

The first track taken from the album, released on October 13th, is 'L'Heure du Loup (Edit),' on which Arandel folds the language of Baroque music into contemporary electronic form.

Born from an improvisation on positive organ, the piece unfolds through harpsichord, strings and winds, synths, spectral choirs and the syncopated drumming of Louis Delorme (Air, Sébastien Tellier). Named after the darkest hours before dawn — when sleep is deepest and dreams most vivid — 'L'Heure du Loup' captures that liminal state between night and day, sleep and waking, presence and disappearance.

Inhabited by everything that lives within silence, Cosmogonies du Silence is haunted by spectral appearances of Baroque motifs, traversed by whispers and accidents, by the breaths of organs and analogue machines, whilst the ghosts of the dance floor exorcise themselves through creeping sub-bass and beats drawing from R&B, drill, chiptune, and lo-fi house. The album gathers around its séance table the presence of Ben Shemie, vocalist and guitarist of Canadian band Suuns; Moroccan singer-songwriter Meryem Aboulouafa; British singer-songwriter and pianist Douglas Dare; and French actor Félix Maritaud (120 BPM).

Six years after the two volumes of InBach, albums revisiting the work of J.S. Bach on instruments from the Musée de la Musique at the Philharmonie de Paris, Arandel returns to his original compositions with Cosmogonies du Silence, his sixth album.

Begun in 2016 and pursued alongside a long process of mourning and analysis, the record opens the pages of ten years of creation in the form of an intimate hauntological journal. After long claiming a desire to efface himself, hiding behind the collective (In D, 2010), chance (Aleae, 2017), or the figure of another composer (InBach, 2020 & 2021), Arandel now uses transparency as a new mask, revealing himself through his ghosts.

Fragments of melody, memories of landscapes, snatches of poems, flashes of vanished voices — so many traces surfacing in the silence like reflections on the surface of deep water. They mingle, distort, and become the fleeting material of these ten pieces, each of which is also like a cosmogony of the silence that follows.

Since the invention of radio, described in the release as that 'ghost machine' in Deleuze's words, the airwaves have been continually invested as a means of amplifying the presence of the beyond and communicating with it. Here, Arandel borrows some of his compositional gestures from the pioneers of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop — Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, and John Baker — who explored the spectral power of sound from an early stage through various processes of editing and manipulation: tape collage, reversing playback direction, filtering, and so on.

Extending this dream that has haunted electronic music since its occult origins — from the spiritualist use of the theremin to Mort Garson's cult albums and the experimental incantations of tape music — Cosmogonies du Silence awakens the voices of the ether and gathers, from landscapes undone by absence, in the echo of what has fallen silent, the remaining matter sufficient to make a world.

Release Details

'Cosmogonies du Silence' is available via Miniwax and Bandcamp, and will soon be stocked in a selection of record stores.

Physical distribution via Bigwax (France and export), Word and Sound (international partner), Republic Music (UK), Forced Exposure (USA), Alive (Germany), V2 (Benelux), and Audioglobe (Italy).

Digital distribution via IDOL worldwide.

The album will be released on LP (including a red biovinyl edition) and CD in gatefold packaging with an inner sleeve.

About Arandel

Arandel is a French composer and producer whose work explores the intersections between electronic music, classical repertoire and acoustic instrumentation.

A self-taught and multidisciplinary artist, he has released six albums and six EPs, primarily on the InFiné label. His debut album, In D (2010), drew on the legacy of Terry Riley and American minimalism. A decade later, the two-part InBach project (2020–2021) reimagined Bach through the lens of Wendy Carlos, bringing synthesisers into dialogue with period instruments from the Musée de la musique at the Philharmonie de Paris.

Beyond his recorded work, Arandel composes extensively for the performing arts and creates site-specific sound pieces for cultural institutions including the Musée du Quai Branly, Gaîté Lyrique and the Ambronay Cultural Centre. He composed the music for Mourad Merzouki's contemporary dance production Phénix, performed more than 100 times, and composed and arranged the music for Bartabas's equestrian production Noces de Crin, presented at La Villette in Paris in 2024.

His work also extends to film, fashion and commissioned projects. He has composed original music for DS, while his music has been used by institutions and brands including the Musée d'Orsay, Jean Paul Gaultier, Chanel, Galeries Lafayette and Hermès. He has also composed music for documentaries and created 'cinémixes' for Gaumont and the Cinémathèque Française.

A frequent collaborator, Arandel has worked with artists including Son Lux, Vanessa Wagner, Agoria and Yael Naïm. He also produces themed mixtapes drawing on archival material and rare sounds.

Photo Credit: Marina Dard