Tallisker is the DIY solo project of French artist Eléonore Melisande, 28. A former cellist and guitarist with a classical and folk background, she is now a full-time DJ, producer and performer with electronic, post-folk & rave aesthetics. Winning the Inrocks Lab Award (2014), the Booster Award (2015) and performing every weekend helped her take off pretty quickly and now she’s pleased to celebrate the release of her debut EP ‘Heliotrop’.

Baroque aesthetics are a major driver to her work: movement, expansion, tumult, ostentation, super-emotion, drama and tension. Her introspective universe often draws comparisons to artists like Björk or Fever Ray while her epic, soaring string sections are reminiscent of post-rock and neo-folk bands like Sigur Ros or Woodkid. The arrangements also feature rough drumkits and nasty sub-bass unveiling a full allegiance to trap & rave culture. 

On ‘Heliotrop’: “Most of the tracks were written in Glasgow, Summer 2015, while listening to a lot of classical Music, mainly Baroque & Romantic-era masterpieces, plus techno and trap music! It was my purpose to explore these extreme genres, from the most traditional to the most recent forms of music to accelerate the genesis of something hybrid and awkward. Heliotrop is also a manifest.”

“My view as an artist is to reassert the fact that there’s no such thing as punk music opposed to noble/classical music. Punk aesthetics are noble and noble music has become punk. That’s what I want to express when I mix cellos with heavy techno-friendly kicks or when an epic brass ensemble embraces a rough trap beat. You can enjoy both a Victorian garden-party and an underground hardcore music party. I’m interested in all the forms; I boil them, I distill them and I make my own stuff. And I’m happy if it’s hard to classify.”

“The artwork reveals this hybridity too. I’m wearing a costume that stands for tradition -religious, aristocratic, sacred. But this costume has been distorted and alienated thanks to contemporary, forward-thinking devices and tricks – Photoshop or other software. So in the end it looks like a ghostly, electronic silhouette full of mystery. You couldn’t say whether the portrait comes from the Tsardom of Russia or from a spaceship. It pictures how you can turn heritage into innovation, and vice versa.”